


Counting Days

by Lightpoint



Series: The Rule of Two [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Attempted Sexual Assault, Badass Rey, Badass Sidious, Child Abuse, Chiss, Clones, Everyone vs. Everyone, F/M, Her motto is 'Not Dead Yet', Inappropriate Use of the Force, It's not over yet, Jakku, Jakku is Space Australia, Jakku is a Death World, Jakku is basically a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Master/Apprentice, Misuse of the Force, Mostly Gen, Niima Outpost, Niima Outpost Militia, Rey is basically space Macgyver, Rey kicking serious ass, Rey the Survivor, Save Water Shower With a Friend, Seduction to the Dark Side, Sith, Survival, The Dark Side of the Force, The Force, complete with warlords and raiders and badassery everywhere, implied PTSD, no such thing as luck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-26 17:28:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 29,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6248941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightpoint/pseuds/Lightpoint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey is a survivor. She uses what she finds. One day she finds a perfectly-preserved Dreadnaught buried deep in the Jakku Wastes, and rescues an emaciated man from a stasis tube deep inside the wreck. </p><p>He says his name is <i>Sidious.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. By the Numbers

**Author's Note:**

> This is my *second* response to the below prompt at the 'The Force Awakens Kink Meme', and is a companion work to my first fill, _[Edge of Night](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6146131/chapters/14081971)_
> 
> _[Palpatine] wants to teach [Rey] because he senses great potential in her and such, Rey is a bit confused about all this Force stuff, but catches up pretty quickly. things go way unexpectedly though when Rey develops a crush on Palpatine, perhaps because she's not used to people caring for her in any way, or whatever. he decides to use it as an advantage.' ___  
>  **Prompt found[here](http://tfa-kink.dreamwidth.org/3467.html?thread=6252939#cmt6252939).**  
>  **Disclaimer:** I own nothing Star-Wars related, especially the characters. If I did, they'd probably be taken away from me for their own protection. _Even Sidious_.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The children of Jakku grow up strong, or not at all.

Rey did not believe in luck. 

She wasn’t sure why. Scavengers were a superstitious bunch, and given that the vast majority spent their (usually short) lives stumbling from wreck to wreck, hoping to trip over something shiny, Rey didn’t really blame them. 

Smugglers, too. Unsurprisingly, Niima Outpost was a gambling hotspot. When she was 6, an old, silvered Wookie used to have her blow on his dice before his throws. _6 to 1, try 5 this time._ A Twi’lek had her spit on the ground under the bench before he sat down for ‘hanger rules’ Sabaac. _25 to 1, with_ that _hand, you’d better bluff – the Toydarian has The Evil One up his sleeve._ And when she was 10 a human pulled her into his lap. 

She’d been practicing (playing) with a staff since before she could remember, running around the scrapyard in a Rebel helmet, metal stinging her bare feet, bobbing and weaving under a hail of imaginary blaster fire, pulling downed pilots out of burning rubble, whacking Stormtroopers on the head. Playing hero. 

_Never tell me the odds!_

Facedown in the sand on the outskirts of town, hands fumbling at her tunic, panic screamed into icy _clarity_ , and her fingers closed around a rusty pipe, half-buried in the sand. Thunder cracked as she struck at the shadow behind her. The back wall of the scavenger bunkhouse went down with a deafening crack - _wind?_ \- and three tents caught on fire. She made sure to scream. 

They came to put out the fire.

Rey crawled under a piece of scrap, her fingers digging into the metal, feet scrabbling, trying to burrow into the sand. The next morning Unkar cut her rations for sleeping outside.

They staked the ‘arsonist’ to the sheet metal roof of the commissary. He lasted three days. 

**######**

Rey was done with stories. The helmet gathered dust. She stayed away from the campfires, the games, closed her ears to the off-worlders and their tales of adventure, and to the rings of wide-eyed children hanging on to their every word. She slipped into line, grabbed her portions, broke into the Outpost scrap yard, and climbed as high as she could. Everything tasted better in the open air. 

She reached the top on her 11th birthday, and fell asleep under the moon.

The next morning, Rey knew what she had to do.

**######**

_I'll need to eat._

There was really only one way to earn a living on Jakku. The scavengers were not exactly eager to add to their competition, and either rebuffed her harshly when she asked to learn, or suggested, leering, that she try her hand at a very different trade.

Not an option.

So Rey ventured out further and further on her own, ‘getting lost’ when Unkar Plutt sent her and the other children out with an older scavenger to help carry their loot. She snuck blueprints and wiring diagrams back to the Outpost, knowing instinctively that they were potentially more valuable than extra food. Rey was barely literate, but the pictures and numbers spoke for themselves. The first time she traced a core line back to backup generator 45-B on the _Inflictor_ , she knew the nights spent studying the charts under the covers had been worth it. 

Quickly she learned that the size of one’s loot did not necessarily reflect value – Tracing the schematics back to the core, the _truth_ of what had made the dead ships fly was often quite small, lost in a wamp-nest of wire, stinking with chemicals. High-impact ion-ceramic resistors were small enough to fit in her hand, and fetched 2 portions apiece on a good day. A cluster of mostly-intact neutronium wire fetched 4, and was easily hidden in her tunic, especially after she began to bind her breasts at the urging of Vona, one of the older women at the Outpost. 

“We’ve all need,” said Vona gruffly (sadly), as she helped Rey arrange the cloth and wire so that she would be reasonably comfortable. “It ‘ent you,” she said firmly, grasping a shaking Rey’s chin and looking her dead in the face. “It _’ent,_ but we stay awake, yes?” 

“It’s not _fair,_ ” said Rey, fists clenched, poised to bolt, to dive into the howl of the wind - _too much skin, sand in her mouth_ \- 

“No,” said Vona. “It ‘ent fair.” She rummaged in her clothes-chest, brought out a new-ish tunic. The girl had gotten taller as well, and the brown top she’d worn since she’d arrived was as thin as tissue paper. 

“It’s not _right!_ ” Rey’s voice cracked. _Quiet, Girl -_ The tent swayed alarmingly, a paper bag in the face of the storm outside. _Rust under fingernails, metal in hand, coppery blood filling her mouth – STOP – DIE -_

Vona shook her head again, sat Rey down, and pulled the tunic over her head. 

“Bad luck,” the old woman said. “Most times, children are safe.”

_5 to 1._

Rey couldn’t quite hide her laugh. Outside, the wind roared. 

“Listen. There are a few. The bad. Always a few. Be awake.” Vona’s brow wrinkled further with frustration. Basic was not her first language, and the words of her native tongue, for this, were made of knives, of vengeance in the dark. Rey eyed to tent flap. The storm that ate flesh and metal screamed for her. 

Vona turned her around. The tunic fit her well. It belted at the waist, and there was plenty of room for growth. It could survive the desert.

“Do not forget,” she said. “They won’t.” Vona nodded at raucous crowd on the other side of the sheet she’d thrown up for privacy. Half the Outpost was huddled in the secondary storage tent with them, talking, laughing, eating, pretending to ignore the elemental chaos held back with canvass and wood.

The words stung - _ripped_ \- but Vona’s eyes were sad, and full of truth. 

Rey knew, in that instant, who had driven the first stake through her attacker’s hand.

She sat still, her mind on fire, and waited out the sandstorm. A rare flash of memory took her. She stood on a little stool in front of a mirror. She was wearing something soft and bright. A faded shape stood at her back. It combed her hair until it shone, pinning it up into three knots that Rey had never managed to get _just right_. The room was so bright and clear that it swallowed her helper, leaving only hands and a gentle whisper. _See? So pretty!_

Lanterns swayed with the tent frame, making it look like the light was dancing. 

“Bad luck,” Vona said again. “Not you.”

**######**

Her little cache of parts stayed hidden under a rock a mile or so outside Niima until she had found a new home – a downed AT-AT deep in the Goazon Badlands she’d spotted while hanging onto an ancient speeder with six other children, en route to the _Ravager_. 

_Armor,_ the pictures told her, _80% of mass 99% resistant to ground-based weaponry. Underside 75% resistant to ground-based weaponry. Exterior dorsal dimension 20.6 meters. 2 KDY FW62 Compact Fusion Drive Systems…_

The latter, of course, were long gone, as were the turbolasers and blaster cannons. But all that Rey really cared about was the three meters of diamond-steel between her and the desert. 

She almost stepped on the little green spineflower growing out of a pile of sand in the cockpit. It was a small, rough, thing that pricked her fingers when she scooped it up. She made a little sand bed for it on the dashboard. _Such a little thing, living here alone…_

 _Silly,_ Rey thought, sitting cross-legged on what had once been the nav console. _Silly little girl_. She stroked the petals carefully, pretending that it was sand in her eyes.

**######**

Soon - _not soon enough_ \- she got the clunky mess of metal that was technically a speeder up and running. Before she left, she walked up to the commissary counter – she was tall enough to see over it, now – And asked Plutt how long she’d been there. He shrugged.

“Local time? Coruscant time? Standard? Why do you care?”

“Just because,” she said, sliding a Grade 2 ion cannon resistor over the couter. He stroked his chin, peering off into the distance.

“Eh…Around 7 standard?”

“Years?” She shivered. _I’m 12._

“No, days,” he snorted. “Got anything else for me?” She shook her head. “Then _get_.”

She packed her meager possessions, and did just that.

Once home, wrapped in blankets against the chill night air, protein powder and chopped carbo cubes simmering on her camping stove, Rey scratched 2556 lines on the bulkhead. She started at the door. They wrapped around the room she’d made habitable, ending a few meters shy of the pile of packing foam and canvas that she was using for a bed. She sat down heavily. The marks swam before her eyes. She curled into herself and sobbed. 

**######**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Jakku is a crappy place to live. It is known.
> 
> 2\. Rey is a survivor. She uses what _works._
> 
> 3\. The flower in the sand? [Canon.](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rey)
> 
> 4\. AT-AT info [here.](http://starwars-exodus.wikia.com/wiki/AT-AT_Walker)
> 
> 5\. 2556 days assuming 365 x 7 + 1 day for the leap year (assuming a Standard year is 365 days IDEK).


	2. Blueprint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Changes and discoveries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally a part of chapter 1 - I split it off because it fit the flow better IMHO. It's a cognition thing for me IDEK.  
> 

Time passed. Rey’s reputation as a scavenger grew. She gutted the AT-AT, trading bits and pieces for food and tools, experimenting with the rest. Her speeder was twice as fast within the year. 

She learned quickly to bring her finds to Plutt one or two at a time – walking around Niima with a laden pack was like writing ‘Please Mug Me!’ on her forehead. Even so, she broke several staffs on a lot of skulls before she found a build that was right for her – lightweight core, comfortable, wrapped grip in the center, slightly weighted at both ends. No spikes. She grew stronger with every bruise, but she was a human female; she’d always be close to the bottom of the barrel when it came to raw strength.

It helped that most of her assailants were painfully _slow_ , and all but shouted their moves when they went in for the kill. The locals started giving her a wide berth. 

Eventually Rey papered over the marks across from her bed with hyperdrive schematics – she was keeping herself up at night, staring, the numbers marching through her head.

_…2600…2601…2602…_

She kept at it, though. She wanted a log, a meterstick, a _clock_ , a - 

_An anchor._

_Remember. I have to remember._

**######**

Days blurred into months, and then years. Rey cut a steady path through both the Badlands and the Graveyard, marking off wrecks on a scavenged map as she went, keeping a careful log of what she found and where. She climbed higher, ran farther, fell, and bled, usually all at the same time. She earned enough to keep her going, if not comfortable. It was rare when she managed to save 5 or 6 portions. 

But that was more than most of her competition. 

_Lucky girl,_ they said, words half envy, half fear. 

Rey did not rise to the bait, and she did not share the secrets of her success: Lines. Numbers. Pictures. Hours of working dead corridors, of snapping life back into fried wires. Days, years of burnt fingers and skin, of falls and broken bones. The thrill of finally making a _connection_ , seeing the schematics come to life.

Not luck.

The others huddled in tents, trading scrap metal and hard-earned salvage tips, little bits and pieces of _the things out there_ that they had no hope of understanding, the hardscrabble greed of _survival_ keeping them on their knees in the dirt. _Fear._

Rey was afraid, too, of so many things. She _used_ it. The fear that kept her competition on the ground drove her forward. It was a tightrope of clarity in a world that wanted to eat her alive.

She thought of the ship - _comebackcomebackdontgoplease_ \- every time she scratched a day on the wall. The marks flowed over her bed, now. 

_They’ll come back for me,_ a quiet voice whispered. It sounded less like her own every year. 

**######**

Rey’s first kill happened when she was 15. She was smiling, an uncharacteristic bounce in her step – she’d gotten 3 portions on her latest trade. She was just starting up her speeder when she felt an undeniable _pressure_ in the back of her head, between her ears, like she had suddenly flown too high, too fast, and the altitude was making her ears pop. Rey threw herself off the speeder, snatching her staff on the way down. A blaster bolt scorched the air where her head had been a half-second before. 

She kept the speeder between her and the two off-worlders while she cast around for something to throw. However, the larger of the two utterly voided her ranged advantage and rushed the speeder, heading for Rey’s right, trying to flank her, shouting for her partner to do the same. One blow, and the human was on the ground, gagging through a smashed windpipe, frothing blood. Rey pulled the body under the speeder and crouched, waiting, as the off-worlder’s partner came around the other side. Rey’s lips curled back into a snarl as she struck at his head, only to gasp and drop to her knees, mind whirling, as a blue stun blast put them both on the ground. 

It was the middle of the day, so there were a lot of witnesses. The dead woman was unceremoniously stripped and dumped into the waste pit. Her partner was strung up and whipped until he passed out. Rey got a slap on the face, and her portions confiscated. _Mind that staff!_

She watched the Wookie dangle between the posts, wheezing, dripping blood, and felt nothing. 

**######**

The air was thick the day she decided to strike out into the northern Wastes. She hesitated, spending longer than usual looking over her speeder, tapping the fuel drum, feeling the brakes, checking and double checking her emergency pack. 

_Silly,_ she thought. It was the wrong time of year for sandstorms, her speeder was in perfect shape (as much as a speeder could get on Jakku), and she hadn’t forgotten anything. But still… 

_The pressure in the back of her head…_

_Silent thunder._

She took a swig of water, shook herself, and gunned the motor. She was probably coming down with something. 

**######**

_The earth was wrong._

She hadn’t seen anything salvageable for a half-hour, and her fuel tank was dwindling – she’d need the rest to get back, lest she be stranded. Then the pressure exploded behind her eyes, a storm in her mind, whiting out her vision. She slammed the brakes and all but fell out of her seat. She lay facedown, heart hammering, gripping the rock as if she was about to fall off the planet. The flaky, black rock, the fragile, crumbling sand. She breathed deep. 

_Fire. Exhaust. Old metal._

_Where?_

She got carefully to her feet. The ground shifted alarmingly. Her senses flared again, and she jumped back, clinging to her speeder – just in time. The thin shelf of carbonized rock and sand-glass dropped, revealing an inky black pit. 

And a gleaming sensor array. 

Rey got out her climbing ropes, hands shaking. She found a ledge just under the lip of the pit that supported her weight and secured one end of her rope to it, let the rest fall. It vanished into the black, hit bottom with a metallic _clang_. 

_Not too far._

Excitement bubbled up in her chest. This was almost too good to be true. 

She resisted the urge to jump up and down, giggling like a little girl when she landed on the hull. A solid, clean, almost _perfectly preserved_ hull. 

But still, she hesitated. 

_Should I do this alone?_

Rey clenched her jaw. _Of course._

**######**

Rey got in through the escape hatch – All IE2 Dreadnaughts had backup manual controls for the escape pods, and a hatch that could be opened from the outside, presumably in case a med or rescue ship needed to board and the hanger was destroyed. It was large enough to admit one person at a time – large enough for a ship-to-ship connect, small enough to pick off hostile boarders one by one. She’d found a blueprint for an IE2 Dreadnaught just last week. 

The ledge was strong enough to support her and some of her heavier tools. She brought her cutting torch, her multi-tool, a 2-filter head lamp, and a tiny glow-rod that she could strap to her wrist, the better to see while she worked. 

She used the white light filter. It was so dark she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, so there was no reason to protect her night vision with the red. 

She should have taken her time, combed the ship deck by deck, gone back for the blueprints, followed the lines and numbers to the choicest parts. She should have come back with more rope, a winch, and a portable generator, and run some lights on the upper decks. She should have planned her attack. 

Instead she went down, down into the belly of the _Gorgon_. 

The power was off, of course, and so Rey moved slowly, her vision restricted to the circle of her light. She left pieces of reflective tape every few meters - Too many scavengers had fallen to their deaths when working in unsurveyed wrecks, or died of starvation, lost in some forgotten corridor, alone and screaming. Rey would not be one of them. 

She found the manual controls for what she was pretty sure was the ‘core’ turbolift that would give her full access to the ship’s insides. She moved it enough to clamber into the shaft, and felt her way down, her feet and hands almost moving themselves. So fast. 

It was like she’d been there before. 

She counted 46 decks, including the bilge. She smiled, even as she choked on the rancid, almost solid air. If there was one thing she could count on, it was that you could never, ever get the smell out of an Empire-era bilge. This, though - 

– The smell enveloped her, just as white noise stabbed through her mind like lightning. She stepped on something soft. 

_Don’t look. Don’t look. Dontlookdontlookdontlook -_

Rey had found bodies before. When she was 9 she’d pulled the mummified corpse of a Rebel pilot out of his X-Wing, and given him a proper burial. The corpse had been light, desiccated, the skin as delicate as tissue paper. An empty vessel. All scavengers came across them from time to time, dry husks in cockpits and med-bays, sometimes with ID tags, some nameless, forgotten. 

This…was not. The eyes were glassy and wide, the skin smooth and slightly damp. Bile rose in her throat. She turned up her head lamp. 

There was more than one. A lot more. 

Rey staggered back. The bilge echoed with her panicked breath. _Hers, hers, HERS._ The noise in her head screamed. She cried out and ran for the hatch to the left of the pile of death. 

She breathed again when there were three inches of steel between her and them. She sank to the floor and forced herself to calm down. Maybe it was because it had been sealed away for so long. No microbes and heat to let nature take it’s course. Maybe… 

_Silly,_ she thought, pushing old pictures, old stories out of her mind. _The dead can’t hurt you._

_How, though?_ The bodies that Rey had encountered before had all been at their posts, or cramped in escape pods, or just scattered in the corridors. These were just…there. _Smooth, unmarked skin._ It was as if they’d all laid down and died. 

A shudder ran through her. 

_What is this place?_

But she had no choice but to continue on. And there was more – a hatch where one had no business being. 

Her hands shook as she stood in the room that wasn’t on any of her charts. The bulkhead…bulged. She traced the seams carefully, squinting at the rivets, turning her wrist light up to full power. 

_A hidden room?_

Rey took off the head lamp and powered up the cutting torch, her mind swimming. She was halfway through the metal when the unmistakable whirr-creak of long-dormant machinery came through the wall, barely audible over the whine of the torch. Rey kept going, her heart hammering, forcing her fingers steady. There was a gush of liquid - _what?_ \- followed by a wet thud. 

_That’s good enough._ She kicked her way into the room. 

The torch hit the ground with a _crack_. 

A pale, knotted _something_ lay in the center of the floor. It shuddered, let out a wet, wheezing cough, and then a cry of pain, a futile attempt to shield…A face? Rey couldn’t see. 

“Sorry,” she mumbled, and switched to the red filter on her wrist light. She approached as quietly as she could, slow, gentle. 

The man was ghost-pale, emaciated, and shaking, his skin slick with the same viscous liquid that was still trickling out of the tank behind him and rapidly covering the floor. He was completely hairless, and – Rey leaned closer, mumbling what she hoped was a reassuring noise. 

He had the bluest eyes she had ever seen. 

. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The dead guys in the bilge? Sidious drained their lives to save himself. Because he's just that kind of a guy.
> 
> 2\. Yep, shit just got real.
> 
> 3\. The bit where Rey finds and buries a Rebel pilot's body? [Canon.](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rey) Seriously there is so much [Fridge Horror](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeHorror) in Rey's backstory. 
> 
> 4\. There is nothing quite like the absolute darkness of the bowels of a ship. I've been in closed-off compartments before, and it is freaking _terrifying._ I'd have gone back for the generator and run some lights. 
> 
> 5\. This fic is _challenging_ to write (understatement), because Rey's voice is so different from Sidious'. She needs conflict and existential confusion, and I am desperately trying to avoid excessive navel-gazing :P


	3. Technical Difficulties - Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rey has a _very_ unexpected problem on her hands.

Rey couldn’t move him. Or, rather, she could _lift_ him – the man was practically a skeleton, no challenge for someone who’d spent her life hauling scrap metal. The problem was how to get him out of the ship.

There was a smaller turbolift on the other side of the deck with an intact manual override – with a few tweaks it would be working fine, and would get her - _them_ \- 40 decks up. Unfortunately, the escape hatch was _46_ decks up, and she’d gotten into _that_ by rappelling at least 50 meters into the pit. 

She couldn’t do it without killing him.

 _What the hell was I thinking?_. 

She’d broken the first rule of the Graveyard scavangers: Top to Bottom. The _Gorgon_ was completely untouched. The air in the upper decks had the stale, metallic smell that Rey associated with very new ships. It meant that the environmental systems had failed closed when the ship went down, and stayed that way. She was the first to walk the decks in years – probably decades. To Rey, it was like walking on _gold_. She could eat for months on what she found just inside the escape hatch. She wouldn’t have touched the bilge until she’d cleaned out the upper decks. But – 

No. She’d _had_ to go. It was a clean site. _Hers._ And damned if she wasn’t going to find out what was in it.

Rey leaned against the bulkhead and slid down to the deck, yawning. She had to make up her mind soon. She’d been pacing up and down the deck for hours, long past nightfall (not that it mattered down here), memorizing the layout, filling her bag with odds and ends. Her head was swimming with the sheer amount of salvageable…everything that was just lying around, waiting for her to pick it up. 

It wasn’t just spare parts and wire. The not-supposed-to-be-here med-bay wasn’t the only room in the not-supposed-to-be-here corridor. There was a bunk room that would fit six humanoids easily, ten if they got really friendly, and a galley that could feed twice that. Said galley was packed with…

Rey had never seen so much food in one place.

Most of it was rotten, but there were crates full of dehydrated rations of the kind that would survive a direct hit from a turbolaser. And she could still sell the rotten stuff – there was a small communal ‘garden’ in the middle of Niima, really just a smattering of spineflowers and spindly cacti tended with grim determination by Vona and her new husband, Mattan. What little Rey knew about ‘gardening’ was that plants needed food, and that other plants allegedly made good plant food. 

_Maybe they’ll stop using womp rat feces…_ Unkar would probably throw a party. 

_Or we could plant something outside the -_

_…We?_

_More spineflowers. Dozens of them. All colors. Hang them everywhere, let the sun in, and fresh air, flowers waving in the breeze, cool, delicious…_  
Rey flinched. _No, there is no -_

A faint, reedy cry issued from the med-bay. Rey jumped up and dashed inside, her heart thudding.

He’d fallen off the surgery cot she’d found folded up in the back of the room, near the stasis tube (or whatever the hell it was), and had landed on his side, his arm twisted under him. His chest heaved alarmingly – he was so thin that every heartbeat shook him. Rey darted to his side and turned him gingerly onto his back.

“It’s ok,” she said quietly, lifting him into a sitting position as carefully as she could. His skin was more…stable, for lack of a better word. When she’d found him her every touch sent him into spasms of pain, and left dark bruises all over his pale, almost transparent skin. He’d been drenched in some sort of nutrient fluid – not bacta, she was sure, though she hadn’t seen _that_ since before Jakku. It stuck to his skin (and her hands) after she’d gotten him off the ground and onto an exam table. She didn’t try to remove the glop once she realized it had _bonded_ to his skin, forming a soft of protective membrane.

_Cell stabilization matrix, maybe?_

Maybe. His skin seemed to be absorbing it without any obvious ill effects, and his reaction to her touch had improved – gasping was an improvement over screaming. 

“Ok, I just have to lift you a bit, all right?” He nodded, the very action exhausting him.

“Thank you,” he whispered, when she’d gotten him back in bed. The man sagged back onto the pillow, his eyes fluttering shut in obvious relief. 

“Just try to sleep,” said Rey. The corner of his mouth turned up into a weak smile. 

“You too,” he said, the words almost too faint to hear. Rey huffed in mock exasperation, even as something soft stirred in her chest. “You are…good to me…” And he was out again. 

Rey sighed and sank to the floor, leaning against the side of the cot, unconsciously breathing in time with its occupant. 

She’d get him out. Somehow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, it's a short chapter, but it feels like a good idea to have Sidious' recovery separated into 'stages'. Rey needs to get used to him...She's still finding the idea of someone depending on her (and this whole 'we' thing) strange. Which is a huge understatement. Yep.


	4. Technical Difficulties - Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey's plans begin to bear fruit, and her new companion grows stronger.

Rey had enough water and rations on her for three days. _Rule 2 of the Graveyard: Be Prepared._ She spent them beating the deck electrical system into submission and routing the potable water tanks – _still full and clean after so long, that’s Old Imperial engineering for you_ – to enable a steady supply to the med bay, within easy reach of its occupant, and to the ‘fresher, where she entertained a brief, tingling fantasy about activating the water shower, but shook the urge before she touched the faucet. 

Just because she was rich now didn’t mean she had to be _wasteful._

Rey worked until she could barely keep her eyes open. Then she dragged a mattress out of the bunk room and set it up next to the door of the med-bay, her staff in easy reach. She had a full view of the room, and a clean shot at anything that came through the door. She lay back rigidly, her thoughts suddenly racing, and pulled a light surgical blanket up to her chin. 

The first night made Rey decide to move him as quickly as possible. Besides her head and wrist lights, she was down to a handful of chemical sticks, all of which were strictly ‘emergencies only’. The electrical bus was theoretically functional, but she had no way to determine the ship’s structural integrity – too much energy in the wrong place could knock out a bulkhead, or, worse, trap them inside the _Gorgon’s_ belly forever. 

So they slept in the dark. 

The man was unconscious most of the time, so the darkness barely mattered to him. Rey jerked in and out of heavy dreams, nightmares so real that she could thrash and claw against them and wake up with raw fingers and bruises. The second night only her urgent need to relieve herself got her up and out from under the sweat-soaked covers, her paralyzed mind certain that a heavy, stinking _something_ was sitting on the end of her mattress, hot, moist breath growing louder as it boldly inched its way up her body.

There was nothing, of course. But the hold was a bad place. She needed to get him out. 

The only effect on her companion, however, seemed to be deeper sleep. His breathing grew even and slow – perhaps even stronger – when she turned off the overhead light. The third night Rey focused on that, and on the soft sounds he made in the middle of a dream, the one or two words, the occasional rustle of sheets. The odd creaks and groans outside their room began to sound more and more like old support struts settling and rumbling ventilation instead of hungry things and teeth. She still slept lightly, but with him there it felt like habit instead of terror. 

Still, Rey hated to leave him there, even if it was just for a few hours. But she needed her tools if she was going to get him to safety. 

 

*

 

By the fourth day the blue-eyed man was still too weak to eat, but he had gained enough lucidity to talk Rey through running an IV from his arm to a bag of nutrient solution. 

“You learn something new every day,” she said, grinning at her handiwork. She’d found a small stash of medical supplies. The plasma bags had expired, and she didn’t like the look of the bacta, but there were several boxes of antibiotic ointment, and vacuum sealed bottles and jars of chemicals and powders with long names and serial numbers in stark, professional script. _Promising and portable._ The rest was pretty benign – bandages, wound sealant, and pressure tape hadn’t changed much in 30 years.

The stasis tube was completely dead, and stayed that way even after she got the emergency generator running. It was one of the most bizarre technical malfunctions that Rey had ever seen – the actuator internals were slag.

“Weirdest power surge I’ve ever seen,” she muttered in the general vicinity of her semi-conscious companion. She’d shifted her focus to the med bay after his periods of awareness could be measured in minutes instead of seconds. She wanted to keep an eye on him, and, well...She wouldn't have wanted to wake up alone and helpless in the belly of a dead ship. 

And if she was completely honest with herself, it wasn't entirely altruistic. Rey had decided long ago that she would never, _ever_ start talking to herself. A lot of scavengers did. It started small – snarky comments and running commentary, and then full-blown monologues at the horrible condition of the Outpost bunk house, or entire conversations about the state of the food. _Harmless,_ Plutt always said. But nearly all of the ‘Whisperers’ wound up lost in the fog of their delusions, and wandered the Wastes, dying by inches, shuffling from wreck to wreck, eyes faraway in their own world. 

Sometimes she envied them. But Rey always made a point of talking to Vona when she visited the Outpost, and at least making eye contact with Plutt. Niima Outpost was a pit, but it was _real._ At home – alone – she counted the days aloud, a ‘plus one’ for every scratch, once a day, every day, and sometimes starship components if she was trying to memorize a new ship class. And even then, she cut it short. 

His voice...It was so unlike her own - or anyone else she'd ever met, for that matter. There was no way she could have dreamed it up. 

“How so?” 

The man shifted onto his side, shielding his eyes carefully with a sheet – light was still painful to him. Rey was up to her elbows in the med-bay central processor, head lamp and wrist light cranked up to the maximum level. The floor was covered in neat piles of removed components, arranged roughly by size and condition.

“Well…” she said, glancing at him uncertainly, the words clumsy on her tongue. _Where do I even begin?_

“I might be able to help. In a manner of speaking,” he said wryly. “I spent a lot of time in here.”

“It’s the 3-V,” she blurted. “The connector lines in here are made of 98% 3-V. Tri-vinoxine alloy,” she said, flushing a bit at his blank stare. “I heard something activate in here before I cut the wall open. This…” Rey waved at the burned-out machinery. “A standard-issue Imperial medical stasis unit doesn’t – “ Her voice faded. This was usually where Vona cut her off. 

“How much power would it take?” he asked. Blue eyes narrowed in concentration. “I’m not the best hand with machinery, but if the core was depleted I don't see how…”

Rey nodded, smiling hesitantly. She crawled over to one of the piles of parts and pulled out the power core in question. It was in even worse shape than the computer.

“You’re right,” she said, crouching next to the cot and holding it up to show him. “These things are only stable over long periods of time. The spec says that they can handle 700k max, but this…” The awkwardness fell away as she pondered the mystery. “High-quality 3-V can take over ten times that. And _this,”_ said Rey, tapping the blackened cylinder. “Is the only place it could have come from. So either there’s a _fourth_ backup layer on this grid, or your tube got struck by lightning. Or something I haven’t thought of yet. This room isn’t on the blueprints, so…” He shifted closer and reached out a pale, surprisingly steady hand.

“May I see?” he asked. Rey nodded, catching her breath. 

“Careful…” she said, and rolled the power core into his palm, cupping her hand under his to help support the weight. _He really_ is _doing better,_ she thought. He’d been shuddering away from the lightest touch the previous morning, and his skin was warm and dry. Rey found herself quashing the urge to press closer. 

She’d forgotten what it was like.

Thin fingers flickered precisely over the metal cylinder, testing the burned edges, finding the crack with surprising speed. 

“So this…blew up?”

“Well...Sort of,” said Rey, laughing a little. “You see how it’s fried at both ends? You’re very lucky,” she said. “This kind of damage means the whole circuit should be slagged. It goes over there.” Rey pointed at a gaping panel near the base of the tube. “The connect into the chamber…” Rey looked away. “I don’t understand what happened, really, because it shouldn’t have, well, _happened,_ not at all, but, you…I’m surprised you’re not dead.”

“Ah,” he said. 

“I’m babbling. Sorry,” she said, putting the power core back into the pile. “I’ll figure it out. Just please don’t touch anything until I know it’s safe.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, sinking back down onto the pillow. “I’m not going anywhere.” Rey blanched as realization hit her. 

“Not _now,”_ she said. “But you will. It just would’ve been a lot faster if all of _this_ wasn’t dead.” Rey gestured around the medbay, sighing. “That _really_ would’ve been too good to be true.” 

“What do you mean?” 

Rey had been avoiding this subject since the moment he’d woken up. 

Luckily, by the time she turned around, he’d passed out.

 

*

 

She shook him awake a few hours later, after rigging up a rail between his bed and the refresher, and setting out some rehydrated rations and a jug of water.

“I’ll be back soon,” she said, standing awkwardly by the bed, her pack suddenly feeling far heavier than it should. On impulse, she reached out and patted his hand. “Really. I have to get some tools.”

“How long?” the man asked, his fingers twining in hers. 

“Maybe half a day,” she said. _He’s stronger,_ she thought, and squeezed back gently. “I have to refuel my speeder and get some tools. I’ll need to trade for a few things, but with what I’ve found here it shouldn’t be a problem.” Rey tapped her bag – she’d decided to only bring Plutt a few of the smaller, damaged parts, so as not to arouse suspicion. 

“Are you going to try to move me?” he asked. 

“Not yet,” said Rey. “Not until you’re feeling better.”

“Is there any reason why we can’t stay here for awhile? All the comforts of home…”

Rey laughed softly.

“It’ll be better up top, you’ll see. I really do have to go.” She gently pulled her hand away, and turned to leave.

“I don’t even know your name.”

Rey paused. 

“I’m Rey,” she said, dropping a playful curtsy. “It is lovely to meet you.”

“Rey…” he murmured, tasting the name. 

“I _will_ be back,” she said. “Then you can tell me yours.” 

She left before she could lose her nerve.

*

 

Unkar Plutt glared at Rey through the grating, crusty eyes suspicious as Rey scooped up her two and a quarter portions and hurried off to the market. It was a shamefully terrible deal for a mostly-intact Zeta-Q capacitor, but the sun was low in the sky and an offworlder was eying the Stormtrooper utility belt in Vona’s stall a little too closely. 

Rey considered the old woman a sort-of friend - _maybe a ‘half friend?’_ \- but friendly consideration only went so far where bartering was concerned. She’d already spent the last of her savings on fuel and a collapsible chainfall – if she got the belt in the next 20 minutes she’d be back at the _Gorgon_ before sundown…

Vona took one look at Rey’s pinched, worried face and sold her the belt on the spot…for two portions. She cocked an eyebrow when Rey handed it over without a word.

“Where’s the fire?” she asked, eyeing Rey shrewdly. “You’ve got that look…Are you getting lucky again?”

“What? No!” said Rey, snatching the belt and hurrying away.

The offworlder – a Weequay in a dirty New Empire flight suit – watched her leave, eyes flicking from the belt to the chainfall, and the lumpy toolbag on the back of the teenager's speeder. 

“She’s found something,” said Vona quietly. She pursed her lips. Mattan hadn’t brought in anything sellable for weeks. “Have you got a speeder?”

The Weequay gripped his blaster and nodded. 

"I want thirty percent. Or I yell for Plutt." said Vona. She spat in her hand and held it out for him to shake. 

The Weequay's two partners drifted over, watching curiously. He spat in his palm and gripped Vona's hand hard enough to bruise.

"Deal."

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The bottom of the _Gorgon_ has a lot in common with the Dark Side Cave on Dagobah. Sidious has a small degree of control of it, it being his natural habitat, and all...
> 
> 2\. My head canon is that [ bacta ](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bacta) has an expiration date, since it is partially organic, as a few sources imply.
> 
> 3\. Yeah, Sidious fried all the tech when he re-entered the land of the living. Rey isn't looking for mystical Force energy blasts, however, so she will eventually accept that her knowledge has limits. For now.


	5. The Road - Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey runs into some problems on her way back to the _Gorgon._ BIG problems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, one of the reasons for the long times between updates is because I had to figure out where the hell everything on Jakku is. I couldn't just write this and the next few chapters blind. Both Google and Wookiepedia were surprisingly unhelpful. I would up looking up all the listed Jakku landmarks, getting out a pad of paper, and sketching out the relative locations. So there is now a visual aid, which I have inserted into this chapter. It'll be in all related chapters, too. Enjoy!

Rey fought down the urge to look over her shoulder every step she put between herself and Vona’s tent. That raw, grinding _pressure_ was back, pounding in her skull like an overheated piston. Worse, she could feel it in her _blood --_ a whole-body heartbeat.

Showing it would be a rookie mistake. This was Niima Outpost, the closest thing this Force-forsaken planet had to a center of government. If she acted nervous here (even justifiably so – she’d been attacked before), she’d be dead meat outside the border.

The tension lessened somewhat when she went out of her way to circle near Constable Zuvio’s shack, nodding at him as she approached. The Constable and his two deputies Drego and Streehn headed up the Niima Outpost Militia – the closest thing that the place had to a criminal justice system. She had to admit – the place had calmed down a bit since the Militia started getting more recruits…Even if she’d been ‘on probation’ since she was 15 as far as the three Kyuzo were concerned. She’d killed in self-defense, though, so it lumped her in with a few other locals as a ‘person of interest’ rather than in with the more dangerous residents. It was almost flattering. 

So generally speaking, they stayed out of her business – there were bigger fish to fry in the cesspit that was Niima. And they were decent folk. Zuvio had an actual conscience, and his deputies were loyal, and genuinely committed to keeping a vague semblance of law in the Outpost.

However, Rey was quick to point out that in town, it was entirely too easy to slip under their noses, for them to lose track of a child or two. To fall through the cracks, and wind up a stripped corpse in a ditch by the Commissary. There really wasn’t much that they could do out in the Graveyard, or far into the Wastes or Badlands.

“We handle the perimeter, little one,” said Zuvio the one time she’d brought it up. “A space to sleep, eat, and work is a valuable thing in a world such as this.” 

_Every little bit helps, I guess,_ Rey thought. 

They also took the locals seriously.

Rey crunched slowly, calmly, through the sand near the Militia headquarters, her senses on high alert.

_There._

Three shadows, standing too still for too long under the tarp by the bunkhouse. She caught Zuvio’s eye and jerked her head slightly, tapping three of her fingers on her staff. He nodded grimly, and hit the radio receiver.

Rey made a beeline to her speeder. If the three offworlders had marked her, they’d already know which one was hers; she had to move. And it was well past noon. Even with the extra fuel she’d strapped to the back of the engine, she’d be on the last drops by the time she got her fr – her _patient_ back to the _Hellhound,_ and the last thing she wanted was a dwindling fuel tank in the middle of the night in the Badlands.

Moving quickly, she strapped on her goggles, head wrap, gloves, and heavy burlap duster – even when she wasn’t in danger of being attacked, the sand would rip the flesh of her bones if she didn’t protect herself. She hesitated, and then pulled a rarely-used set of shaak-leather greaves and a battered, way-too-big-for-her synth-leather vest out from under the seat. The makeshift armor wouldn’t stop a blaster bolt, but it’d at least blunt a hit from the much more common, but still deadly, slugthrower rifles, as well as force-pikes and blades. It also made her look _bigger._ Much as she hated to admit it, out in the Wastes the less civilized denizens of Jakku equated her small size and slight build with ‘easy target.’ And she didn’t need that, not today.

The pressure flared again as she passed through the gate, growing shrill and painful the closer she got to the Badlands. The fastest way to the _Gorgon_ was to skirt the Goazan, circle around the _Ravager,_ staying close to Carbon Ridge until the terrain grew too rough, and then head off north into the wasteland. She’d travelled it a thousand times, searching for smaller wrecks in the shadow of the hulking rot of the Super Star Destroyer.

And yet…

Rey cut the engine. That strange sense of…otherness had led her to the _Gorgon._ She wasn’t going to ignore it now. 

She headed back towards the Outpost. Only one option was left to her. She gritted her teeth and prayed to whatever might be listening that Cerebos had had a good day. Whenever he and his raiders struck gold, either in salvaged parts or in blood and treasure, the ensuing revelry could be seen (and sometimes heard) from both Niima and her home. They wouldn’t care about a little speeder slipping a little closer to their territory than was strictly polite. They’d light up the _Ravager_ with torches, harsh, droning music, and raucous laughter (and screams), pass out in puddles of booze and bodily fluids, and everyone else in the general vicinity could relax a bit for the night. 

The Clan -- the current 'owners' of the _Inflictor_ \-- had been pretty quiet for the last few weeks. No signs of a sandstorm. The sun was high in the sky. 

_Now or never._

 

*

 

Drun tensed as his macrobinocular array pinged. _Proximity warning._ Two seconds later Velan and Braxtar commed him. 

“We have a visual,” said Velan. The Weequay and the Human were crouched in the bottom of their cargo hauler, essentially an engine attached to a deck and half-enclosed cargo bay, retrofitted with ancient speeder turbines. Drun was hidden behind an outcropping of rock a few miles outside Niima, directing his crew from afar, having had to rather hastily rethink their strategy after the girl headed back to town, three miles shy of the ambush. 

But the cargo hauler was slowly gaining on her, and with her current trajectory she’d be headed straight for the relatively open stretch of ground between the two biggest wrecks around – the _Inflictor_ and the _Ravager._

Drun fired up his swoop bike. The thing was basically an engine with a metal seat, some support struts, and steering gears – no extra weight. On the open road, he had the clear advantage in maneuverability and speed. He’d be on that bantha cart of hers in no time. 

_And then we’ll have her._

**########### JAKKU MAP - VERY, VERY NOT-TO-SCALE######################################################**

[](http://s3.photobucket.com/user/lightpoint/media/Jakkumap.png.html)

##################################################################################################

 

Rey swore under her breath as the ragged shapes of the _Inflictor_ and _Ravager_ loomed in front of her, the city-sized wrecks growing closer every second. The Force-damned _pressure_ was _back._ It had let up for about a half hour after she’d turned around, but now it was rising to a fever pitch.

 _Make up your damn mind!_ she cursed silently.

But maybe it was nothing. Oily fires flickered in the lower decks of the _Ravager,_ the handful of beings inside going about their business, unconcerned about one beat-up speeder. 

_The war parties might not be back yet…_ Then her senses flared. She wrenched the controls hard over to the left – 

The hungry roar of a swoop engine came at her from the side. Rey swore violently and bent over as low as possible, just barely avoiding the metallic flash of a force-pike. 

The swoop pilot, a Twi’lek in iron-weave armor, matched her pace easily, gripping the controls with one pale hand and slashing a smoking hole in the body of her speeder with his pike with the other. 

“Shut down!” he yelled, gesturing to an outcropping of rock a few hundred meters ahead. Rey flashed him an obscene hand gesture and gunned the auxiliary turbine, laughing at his shocked expression as her speeder shot forward. She smiled ferociously. At full power, her baby could haul ass at speeds that rivaled a swoop bike in high gear. She just needed to lose him in the Graveyard, and not burn too much fuel, and keep from getting too close to the _Inflictor…_

Rey cursed again as a blaster bolt shattered a wall of scrap metal on her left. Her stomach flipped when she spotted some sort bastardized barge join the Twi’lek, the two pirates aboard jeering obscenely, their faces looming large in her rear-view mirror. 

Rey’s world shrunk down to the twists and turns of the scrap-strewn earth, the rage of her speeder underneath her, and her pursuers, and the lurid pictures her mind was supplying about what was going to happen to her, to the grave-pit just outside Niima, to pain and heat and _they’re never coming back for me..._

An idea welled up, dirty and vicious. 

_But those fuckers deserve it._

She gunned the thrusters and headed off the road, angling closer and closer to the blasted-out walls of the _Inflictor,_ reaching under her seat for the toolbox she kept for emergencies.

There was a cry of triumph behind her as she slowed, the two vehicles darting forward to flank her. She waited until they were neck and neck, and the Twi’lek was gesturing to a spot of wreckage.

Rey threw the first flare at the cargo hauler, catching the Human female full in the face, setting her light cloth tunic on fire. She leaped over the side, screaming, her voice abruptly cut off as she hit the side of a half-wrecked TIE at over 200 kph. Her Weequay companion screamed with rage and rammed her, driving her straight towards the swoop. The Twi’lek dodged the second flare, his face contorting with anger at the deafening explosion on the side of the _Inflictor,_ throwing his swoop off-balance, allowing Rey to gain a few precious meters.

_One more…_

She launched the third flare high in the air. It made it about 40 decks up, exploding in a spectacular wreath of light and color. The shockwave knocked rattled the transparisteel on the ever-closer Star Destroyer. 

“Come on, wake up…” Rey muttered, her heart pounding. She gunned the engine again and slanted further towards the _Inflictor,_ the remaining 2 pirates hot on her tail.

But they were gaining. Her speeder couldn’t handle this level of speed for long. And the Twi’lek knew it. 

“Shut down!” he roared, powering up the force pike. 

“Go fu –" Rey's senses screamed, and she dropped altitude, the G-force pulling at her insides as a rust-encrusted cable, capped with a huge, barbed hook, slammed into the cargo hauler, missing her head by inches, immediately followed by a mixture of electrified chains, sheet metal projectiles, and rocks. Horror filled the Twi’lek’s eyes as the side of the _Inflictor_ opened up, unleashing a swarm of rag-clad humanoids on swoops, heavily modified speeders, and one wobbly, but _heavily_ armed T-65 Skyhopper. 

Rey whooped with triumph, her blood on fire with adrenaline. The Clan was here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. This...escalates. Quickly.  
> 2\. The map is also posted on my blog, [here. ](http://lightpoint.dreamwidth.org/3685.html)  
> 3\. The [Niima Outpost Militia](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Niima_Outpost_Militia) is canon...But I suspect that they are fighting a losing battle. It's kind of a toss-up between the Wild West and the 'Mad Max' Wasteland, after all.  
> 4\. [This](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Swoop) is a swoop bike.  
> 5\. The _Ravager_ is the Super Star Destroyer that Rey and Finn flew the _Falcon_ through in Episode VII. Both it and the _Inflictor_ (the Imperial Star Destroyer we see in the beginning of Episode VII) are visible from Niima...And I couldn't find a 'relative location' for either of them, so I'm going with what I've got.


	6. The Road - Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey's day goes from bad to worse. Zuvio isn't exactly having a blast either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I put the map in the chapter (this time it's at the end).

Ice flooded Drun’s core as five shrieking humanoids dropped their loose handholds on the Skyhopper and came down on Velan like a hammer, knocking the cargo hauler off balance. It was over in seconds, the Weequay’s shrieks of agony slashing through Drun’s head as they ripped him to pieces. Things went from bad to worse as one of them discovered the gun mount and the weapons cache under the deck, whooped with triumph and began passing out the loot. A tall mass of cloth and blood that _might_ have been a Chiss barked a command and flashed a series of hand gestures. A rope ladder dropped from the Skyhopper, and three swoops decorated with leather and bones matched pace with the rig. 

Drun’s last sight was the harsh Jakku sun winking on the scope of his own sniper rifle. 

 

*

 

Rey couldn’t stop laughing. Roars and screams and the music of broken-down engines filled the air, the scene on the cargo hauler clear as a holovid in her rearview mirror. 

Her laughter died as the Clan warriors cracked the deck plates and hauled out weapon after weapon – at least a dozen hold-out blasters, a macroscope sniper rifle, and a bristling mass of force pikes and cobbled-together energy weapons that Rey couldn’t identify. There also appeared to be a massive amount of ammunition for everything on the rig. And a gun turret. 

Well, she _had_ been wondering why in the hell three offworlders would head into the Graveyard with a swoop and a glorified dump truck. 

Her speeder whined alarmingly, the smell of burning metal filling her nose just as more raiders shot down the rope ladder onto the cargo hauler. The tall being balancing effortlessly on the prow shouted and pointed in her direction. She didn’t need to understand Cheunh to get the gist.  
_Can I hide?_ The area between the _Inflictor_ and the _Ravager_ was strewn with burned-out husks of starships, both small and large. The ground was broken as well, thanks to the impact of said starships and the wear and tear of time and Jakku’s sun. But the Clan and, worse, Cerebos’ Army, knew the area far better than she did. There’d be eyes on her from both sides of the corridor. Worse, the area was notorious for having been picked clean of anything remotely sellable by her fellow scavengers.

She _might_ be able to repair her speeder with the parts she had in her cargo compartments, but if the damage was as bad as she feared, she wouldn’t be able to scrounge up what she needed. And she was over 50 miles outside of Niima. She’d die of exposure if she tried to hoof it, if the raiders didn’t get her first. 

So her choices were crash and die, hide and probably die, surrender and _hope_ that she died, and keep flying and hope for a miracle. 

Rey laughed again, high and painful. Maybe the Force would send her a new speed – 

_Now_ there’s _an idea…_

Rey wrapped the Stormtrooper utility belt around her waist, cinching it as tight as it would go, keeping one hand on the control panel. It was still loose on the last fastener, hanging around the top of her pelvis. Behind her, the pack closed in, swoops forming up alongside the cargo hauler, flanking it, the Skyhopper dropping back to cover them as the rear ranks formed a solid mass behind the leaders. 

She sucked in a deep, steadying breath. Her fingers closed around the cable lock release.

Shouts rose as she slammed the brake and dropped altitude, the pack leaders blazing over her head, filling her lungs with smoke. She counted out three seconds – half the average deceleration time of most Old-Empire hybrid rigs – and floored the accelerator, coming up behind the swoop-gravdrive-speeder hybrid that she’d spotted in her mirror, outfitted with a nearly clean set of late-gen anti-grav thrusters. And an extra seat. She locked the controls in autopilot, threw the chainfall she’d bought in Niima over her shoulder, and aimed the belt grappling hook at the light cargo rack behind the pilot’s seat.

She locked everything else away – the noise, the burning air, the sweat flooding her mask, stinging her eyes, and fired. 

Her speeder rammed the hybrid. The sudden impact threw the pilot over the bow just as Rey’s hook hit the rack. She jumped, the cable a safety line off of her speeder and onto her new ride.

 _Well, that’s going to hurt tomorrow,_ Rey thought dazedly as she extracted herself from the cable. She dumped the chainfall into the passenger seat, scrabbled with the controls -- _standard Imperial 614-AvA, whose idea was that_ \-- and lit up the thrusters. 

Enraged shouts followed her as she banked right, hard, and left the swoop cluster in the dust. She crouched low, flattening herself as much as she could, counting under her breath.

Her abandoned speeder exploded on ten. 

 

*

 

Cerebos was having a very bad day. The old Human’s talk of lazy, fat, settlers squatting on the edges of the Goazan had been just that – talk. On some level, though, he had to admire the man’s endurance. There weren’t many beings that didn’t crack after a good flaying. Luckily, he’d saved a few bits for later. 

In the meantime, though, the Army was restless. There were fifty-some new recruits that needed to be _blooded,_ and soon. 

He wondered, idly, if there was such a thing as too much success. No one had attacked the _Ravager_ in months. The Militia left him alone, as long as they stayed away from the Outpost…a tempting target, if not for the energy field ringing the entire settlement, the seven-foot-thick gate, and the blaster cannon blinds. The vermin in the _Inflictor_ had stayed silent after the last battle, licking their wounds, snuffling for scraps in the dirt, and spawning younglings. Cerebos clenched his jaw. He never should have made that treaty.

_But then there’d be no one left to fight…_

The fear was nice, though…And if they put one toe (or any other appendage) out of line…

His comlink crackled – his first Lieutenant, Chas. 

“Fire on the Road, Sir!”

Cerebos almost laughed.

The Clan had room in the treaty to defend themselves. Within reason. And today, he didn’t think that any variety was within reason. 

_Stupid treaty anyway…_

“Form up!” He roared. “Tonight, we take the _Inflictor!”_

The day was looking up.

 

*

 

Zuvio paced back and forth, the radio filling his office with static. Drego hadn’t checked in yet. His cousin had been stationed just east of Carbon Ridge, and had been monitoring the 200-strong war party heading back to the _Ravager_ when he’d sent out the descriptions and trajectory of the three pirates following Rey. Unkar had been putting pressure on him to watch out for the girl – she was one of his best scavengers, repeatedly coming back to the Outpost with more than enough loot to keep herself alive, unlike many of the others. 

_An ok kid,_ he thought, a little sadly. He’d asked around about her (discreetly, of course) after she’d killed an offworlder, and Unkar’s scavengers had enacted their brand of justice on the dead Human's partner. The Wookie had survived the lash, despite the locals’ best efforts, but wouldn’t be coming back to Jakku anytime soon.

He’d stopped the lynching – thankfully in the early stages – and dragged the Wookie to the storehouse that passed for a jail. Drego cleaned and dressed his wounds. No anesthetic, though. 

Vigilante ‘justice’ had become rare after the Militia grew large enough to need their own bunkhouse, but the threat lingered. And Zuvio knew better than anyone else that his recruits couldn’t be everywhere at once. 

He’d examined the Human’s body, too, though it meant lowering himself into the solid waste pit just outside the walls. _One hit, right in the larynx._ The several dozen witnesses (though the details varied slightly, but then they usually did, refracted by eye physiology and species cognitive quirks) all told the same story – clear-cut self-defense. 

Zuvio believed it. Rey had been standing with the others when they strung up the Wookie, watching, a look of clinical detachment on her face. But she’d flinched at every scream, and stared _through_ him when he’d questioned her. She’d clearly never killed before. Zuvio wished, for the umpteenth time, that such a thing hadn’t been necessary, that he or one of his men had been there. 

The sadness hit him again. The strong preyed on the weak everywhere in the galaxy, but here, all but the flimsiest of pretense was gone. 

But that didn’t mean that he could look away. 

Zuvio eyed the radio, the back of his neck itching. Something just wasn’t right. 

Then the receiver pinged three times, paused, and then buzzed – the _Inflictor_ perimeter code. 

_Streehn._

“Boss, the Clan is moving,” his cousin said when Zuvio picked up. “Some fireworks just inside their territory – can you get Drego on the line?”

“Roger Streehn. And no,” said Zuvio.

“The _Ravager_ band is just static – it’s being jammed, and – “ There was a burst of white noise. “ – and it’s either a dust storm in the – No, wait – “ 

“Streehn?” Zuvio barked. “Streehn do you copy?” 

More static, then – 

“Boss, I have eyes on the Army – Repeat, eyes on the Army. They’re headed for the _Inflictor._

Zuvio cursed, loudly and inventively. 

_Drego, where the hell are you?_ The last time that two raider groups had fought over Graveyard territory, the survivors, high on blood and victory, had turned their sights on Niima Outpost. 

“Streehn, get the settlers in the Perimeter Zone inside the gate, then hold position. I’ll handle things here.”

“Roger that.” Streehn cut the transmission abruptly. No need to stand on ceremony. They all knew what was coming. Zuvio keyed in the Outpost public code and cranked the comm transmit radius up as high as it would go. 

“This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill. Militia assemble at the front gate. Repeat. Militia assemble at the front gate…”

 

*

 

There were two miles between her and the Clan, but Rey couldn’t relax. It was maybe five miles until the technical end of their territory, but they’d been known to pursue people far beyond that. And then there was the _Ravager…_

She eyed the fuel gauge. Assuming that the previous owner had calibrated this thing correctly, she should have enough to get to the _Gorgon,_ but she’d need to refuel. And she had _no idea_ what the control panel on the passenger side was for. 

Rey _hated_ using other peoples’ custom rigs. For all she knew, it was a self-destruct switch. 

She changed her mind when it crackled with static. _A comm receiver…_ She fiddled with the dial, then stopped as she realized that it was set to the Niima public broadcast channel. _Keeping tabs on us, eh?_ she thought. _They’re probably waiting for the force field to come down._ The Clan was pretty quiet these days, but she wasn’t exactly surprised that they’d be monitoring the Outpost for possible weaknesses. She smacked the dashboard, hoping it would clear out the static.

_\-- not a drill. All citizens assemble in storehouse 4. Repeat. All citizens assemble in storehouse 4 --_

Rey frowned. 

_What?_

Her senses flared again. She wrenched the speeder to the left, cursing as the unfamiliar controls took her on a much sharper turn than she’d intended, just in time to avoid the blast of laser fire. She winced as the after-image burned behind her eyelids.

 _Not possible. They don’t have anything big enough to make that blast. Not at that range --_ She risked a glance over her shoulder – the speeder had a rear holo-viewer installed, but it was calibrated for a much taller being, and she didn’t have time to adjust it.

She was immediately sorry that she’d looked. Half of the Clan raiding party was on fire, three hulking gunships, bristling with ugly weaponry, looming close on their tail. Rey swallowed. The machines were cobbled together from every variety of craft that she’d seen in the Graveyard – the leader had a TIE cockpit slung under a Z-95 chassis, all welded to the remains of a Hutt sail barge and bracketed by Y-Wing engines and deck plating from who-knew-where. The overall effect was that of a monstrous, one-eyed head.

The _Cyclops._ Cerebos’ ship. Rey had only seen it from a distance, in silhouette.  
She slammed the accelerator to the deck, holding on grimly as thrusters lit up with a roar, praying that the speeder’s owner had kept the thing in good order. 

She wasn’t going to be taken alive. 

*  
*

**JAKKU MAP, VERY VERY NOT TO SCALE**

 

[](http://s3.photobucket.com/user/lightpoint/media/Jakkumap.png.html)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I decided that if Anakin can pilot a pod and win the Boonta Eve Classic when he's 9, and Luke can fly an X-wing with zero training and blow up the Death Star when he's 19, 16-year-old Rey can board and capture a speeder.  
> 2\. I'm resisting the urge to have Zuvio say: [I'm getting too old for this shit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHhgllqSKro), or the Jakku equivalent >:)  
> 3\. Yep, [Niima has a gate. ](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Niima_Outpost) And taking a closer look at some of the Niima pics, it looks like there's some sort of powered fence ringing the settlement. The Lars farm on Tatooine had a perimeter force field...I figured that that's probably what the Niima fence is. Makes sense - Jakku isn't a nice planet.


	7. The Road - Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey gets cornered, and has to think fast if she wants to get out alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you reading 'Indulge', and caught the reference to 'Cerebos the warlord', this is where he first gets fixated on Rey. Who is so not down with this.  
> So, **warning** for Rey getting pervved on. Of course, those of you who are reading 'Indulge' also know what happens with this plot arc  >:)

The Chiss perched on the bow of the cargo hauler hefted a sniper rifle.

“Eyes front!” Cerebos roared, and lit up the turbo thrusters. His lieutenants Chas and Minnie flanked him as he powered through the Clan rear guard, fire and twisted metal glancing harmlessly off his shields. The warlord eyed his side scanners. _Clear._

“All ahead full!” he yelled, nodding to the three raiders crouched behind him. They whooped with glee and headed for the hatch, grappling hooks in hand. Cerebos’s blood screamed in his ears as they closed in on the Chiss, cutting through the Clan in a whirlwind of broken bodies and fire. “Unlock in five – four – three – HOLD!”

He dropped altitude just as the Chiss fired off three shots in rapid succession, his dorsal proximity monitor shrieking in warning. His starboard wingman wasn’t so lucky.

“My gyros are gone!” Chas shrieked, his voice shorting out the comm. “I can’t steer – “

Rage flooded Cerebos’ body as the wounded ship swayed drunkenly from side to side, belching smoke from the shredded underbelly.

“Chas – Eject!” Minnie cried. “I can’t get a lock on -- My Lord – “

“Stay on target!” Cerebos barked. “Hard starboard -- Fry the Sithspawn!” 

Too late. The Chiss fired again, this time taking out the front deflectors. Three Clan warriors backed him up, raining blaster fire on Chas’ ship. Two more fired up the energy turret in the rear, keeping Minnie’s Headhunter at bay with a hail of green fire.

The Clan raiders howled in unison as Chas’ ship smashed into the _Ravager._ The Chiss fired three shots into the air – the back-world code for _parley_ \-- and waved in Cerebos’ direction. The warlord squinted. 

_A comlink._

“Want to talk, eh?” he sneered. “Look at that, it wants to _talk!”_

The cockpit rang with laughter. 

“Stand by to unlock,” Cerebos barked. _Chas died well,_ he thought. “Burn them all!”

 

*

 

Thunder rocked the canyon as one of Cerebos’ gunships hit the _Ravager._ The Clan screamed with triumph, voices cutting through the roar of engines and fire. Rey gripped the controls grimly and pulled up the dashboard diagnostic screen.

Fuel: _Good._

Coolant: _Good…I think…_ Rey had never flown this particular species of speeder, and if the previous owner had altered it significantly, her mental library of its relatives would probably hurt more than help. 

Alternator: _Ok – Needs a checkup._ She’d take care of it at home. 

_Yeah,_ she thought defiantly. _I’m making it home._

Maglev: _Decent, but it’s almost in the yellow, and the way I’m pushing it…Kriff…_ The speeder chassis _clanged_ and lurched under her, as if to punctuate her thoughts.

And the raiders were gaining.

It didn’t matter that they were hell-bent on taking each other out. If they caught up to her, she was dead.

_Or worse._

Rey pushed the thought back. She’d been cornered before. Never like this, yes, but at some point, she always got _tired_ of being afraid. The terror sharpened her senses, slicing the world away until only her life and her target remained. 

That, and how she was going to hit her target. 

Then it either burned itself out, and she was left slumped and shaking on some forgotten catwalk deep inside a rotting wreck, the ledge she’d been standing on seconds before vanishing into the dark, or smoldered deep and red and bloody, a rough grip on her core that dragged her forward by that last, shuddering thread of strength, keeping her alive. It didn’t care how.

Nausea gripped her. The memory of her staff crushing the human woman’s windpipe - the wet _crunch_ of cartilage and skin - welled up to the surface of her mind.

Rey didn’t know if she could do it again. She’d been outnumbered and out-gunned, up against an enemy that would gladly kill her for the food in her knapsack. She’d been on autopilot, lashing out to keep the human and the Wookie _away,_ and then – 

_It won’t come to that,_ she thought. _I’ll make it, I’ll --_

Blaster fire scorched the air, much closer this time. She jerked the controls hard to port – 

Not fast enough. Two swoops screamed overhead while two more flanked her, the riders shrieking obscenities. Rey ignored them and dropped altitude, keeping as low to the earth as she could without flooding her engine with sand, and used the wreckage for cover. 

_Two miles, two miles -_

It might as well have been a thousand. Electro-mag drag-chains shot out from the two lead swoops, too fast for her to avoid, and latched onto her speeder, jerking her abruptly to a halt and almost sending her flying over the console. 

She was trapped.

Rey cast about wildly, eyes and hands scanning the inside of the speeder as the raiders approached, already sizing her up for the auction block. _Nothing._ She’d abandoned her staff when she’d ditched her old speeder. She still wore the utility belt, but it didn’t have much in the way of defense. The chainfall was too heavy, and she didn’t know what the speeder -- _Wait_ –

Rey’s breath caught as something jabbed against her foot. Thinking fast, she threw up her hand to shield her actions, and snatched up the vibroblade hidden under the seat. Just in time. 

“Hands in the air!” roared the closest raider. “Power down, now!” 

Rey slipped the weapon into her vest, beneath her tunic, clasped her hands behind her head, and tried to keep her breathing under control. 

_Not dead yet…_

 

*

 

Cerebos set his gunship down on one of the larger pieces of debris towards the end of the Road, smiling as he took in the surrounding carnage. His raiders had overwhelmed the Clan, fired up by Chas’ death, the promise of loot, and a newly open spot at their Lord’s side. 

The raider chuckled as he climbed out of the cockpit, eyes fixed on the blood-spattered figure kneeling at his new Lieutenant’s feet. 

“Can it stand?” Cerebos asked, stripping off his gloves and tossing them carelessly to the side. The Twi’lek smirked nastily and wrenched the prisoner’s head back, dislodging the head wrap in the process. 

The Chiss choked as his neck bent painfully, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. He glared, red eyes flashing, defiant even through the pain racking his body – his normally dark blue skin was almost impossible to discern under the blackening bruises and dried blood. 

“I can stand,” he hissed, and jerked out of his captor’s hands. He dragged himself to his feet, swaying alarmingly, the red glow in his eyes flickering.

Cerebos’ smile split his face. 

_Chiss. So many tells. The eyes give them away…_

He stood silently for a long moment, savoring the victory. 

“You violated the treaty,” the Clan warrior hissed. Cerebos laughed.

“Treaty?” He shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder about you people…Put him with the others,” he said, glancing at the new Lieutenant. “Cuff him to the rail.” 

The Chiss went quietly, his eyes flickering from face to face, cataloging everything around him. Shouts rang out as Cerebos’ men quickly recognized him as Chas’ killer. 

“Leave him for me,” Cerebos barked as two enraged Devorians cocked their blasters. He murmured to a nearby raider to keep a close eye on…Thegas? Thror? _All Chiss names sound the same to me…_

It was, all in all, a good day. The Army had spilled blood once again, had broken the back of an old enemy. Cerebos fell into step beside Rathor, his new Lieutenant, and took stock of the situation, listening intently to the Twi’lek’s crisp report. 

The survivors had fallen back to the _Ravager,_ smashing several of their vehicles into the _Cyclops_ in a last-ditch attempt to keep him at bay long enough for them to retreat. By Rathor’s estimation, fifteen warriors remained. They’d also managed to hold onto the stash of weapons in the cargo hauler they’d captured from the offworlders they’d been chasing when the fighting began. 

He smirked. It wouldn’t help them for long. Even now, raid parties were scaling the side of the ship, ripping holes in the bulkhead with plasma torches and moving from room to room, dragging out the occupants to kill or keep. Desperate screams filled the air, punctuated by the occasional burst of blaster fire as his Army subdued the last holdouts.

 _Lots of younglings,_ he thought, as Minnie herded the first group of prisoners onto a large flatbed barge. Children were easy to sell on Jakku, especially ones just out of infancy. At that age, most species had few bad habits to weed out, and could be shaped into whatever form their owner desired. Cerebos usually sold the littler ones in groups, with at least one adult female to keep them in line – and to sweeten the deal, if the buyer fancied such things. 

_Speaking of which…_

Two of his swoop riders were peeling a layer of tough leather off of a struggling female. One locked her arms behind her back, deftly dodging her attempt to bite, while the other took a vibroblade to the fasteners of her vest, cursing as it sparked against metal embedded in the leather. Cerebos frowned. 

_Armor?_

“Hold,” he said, watching the female closely. “Bring her to me.”

The two raiders grasped the female’s arms and shoved her forward. She went without resisting, her eyes sharp and wary, standing straight and tall despite the blade at her throat. The Zabrak snarled and pushed her to her knees.

“Sir,” he said. “This one was trying to escape. I don’t think she’s Clan, but – “

“I’m not,” she snapped. “I was just passing through, I – “

“Shut it,” hissed the Zabrak’s partner, kicking her in the ribs. She gasped and fell facedown onto the burning metal.

“If you’re not Clan, then what are you, hmm?” Cerebos nodded at his men, who hauled her to her feet, wrenching her arms behind her until she gasped with pain. He stepped forward and yanked her head back by the hair, pulling roughly on one of the three buns that kept it in place. 

“I work for Unkar!” she cried. “One of his best! He’ll – “

“Will he pay for you?” Cerebos asked. _Probably not much,_ he thought. _Scavengers are a credit a dozen…_ He looked closer, his fingers twining in her hair. 

…Which was surprisingly thick and soft. The color went well with her lightly tanned skin, and while the style was a tad harsh for his taste, it certainly showed off her delicate features, and highlighted the fine bones of her face. _Strong,_ he thought, his blood stirring as that lovely face twisted with anger. _And the eyes…_ He hadn’t seen that particular shade of green before. In the waning sunlight, they were almost luminous… 

Cerebos leaned in closer, smiling as she sucked in a harsh, panicked breath. She smelled of earth and metal, with the light tinge of engine oil.

“Have you had a man before?” he murmured in her ear. She stiffened, her breath stuttering as the color drained from her face. The two raiders holding her whooped, twisting her arms until she cried out with pain and jerked against their grip, stumbling closer to Cerebos in the process. They pulled off the remains of her leather duster and threw it over the side, leaving her standing in her tunic, leggings, and that tightly laced leather vest. Cerebos snaked his arm around her middle and pulled her to him, humming with approval at her trim figure. _A little extra food, and she’ll fill out nicely,_ he thought, tracing the slight curve of her hip. _But for now…_

“Status report?” he yelled in Rathor’s general direction. 

“Nearly there sir,” the Lieutenant said, grinning broadly. “We’ve captured six warriors and killed twelve. The advance guard shows that there is one band left, covering a residential block a few decks down.”

“Excellent,” said Cerebos. “You two,” he barked at the two raiders before him. “Take this to my ship. Show her the ‘fresher, make sure she gets cleaned up.” He handed off the girl to the Zabrak and reloaded his rifle. 

“Let’s finish this,” he growled. Rathor whooped and waved three warriors over to flank their leader. Cerebos led the way through the hole in the bulkhead. 

_Battle, blood, and, later, a girl,_ he thought, as he mowed down the first wave of defenders.

It was a good day.

 

*

 

 _Whoever fixed this is a dumbass,_ Rey thought dully, staring at the shoddy welding and strange piping at the base of the shower cubicle. The two grunts had locked her in a ‘fresher near Cerebos’ quarters on the _Cyclops._ Said quarters were located in the top deck close to the bridge, but far from the exterior bulkhead, which meant that it was completely sealed off. _Security,_ she guessed. Which meant that there were no windows to break. The walls were thick, the seams welded shut. _No exposed wiring or heater coils to destroy._ And from the distant thrum in the metal, she was too far from the engine room to make a break for it, and potentially hijack the ship from there. 

She shuddered and gripped the edge of the sink, trying to wrestle down the visceral terror welling up inside her, hand-in-hand with the memory she thought she'd put away long ago.

_\-- Blood and grit filling her mouth, choking off her scream –- huge hands pulling at her clothing –- too much skin --_

_I'm not a child anymore. I'm not, I --_

Rey straightened and glared at her reflection in the warped, dirty mirror. She could barely make out her features through the grime, despite the harsh, sterile overhead light. 

Rey jumped as one of her guards pounded on the door.

“Either you clean yourself or we do it for you!”

“Give me a minute!” she yelled back, putting a little tremble into her voice. “Please…”

Her fingers closed around the vibroblade she'd hidden in her tunic.

“Make sure to wash _everywhere!”_ the guard jeered. 

She didn’t bother to respond. Instead, she turned on the shower, and used the rattle of the poorly –- disgracefully, actually -- retrofitted sonic setting to cover the whirr of the vibroblade on metal and leather as she sliced up her vest, digging out the steel plates lining the inside, and the sharp hooks keeping it closed. She ground the hooks into cut leather strips, which she wrapped around her hands, and rigged up a makeshift sheath, strapping it inside of her tunic so she could get at the blade quickly. She embedded the rest of the metal shards into the heel and toes her boots, the sharp tips just barely visible. Anything that she kicked would get an extremely nasty surprise.

But she had to buy more time, to at least _look_ like she was complying. 

Rey squinted into the mirror and let her hair down. She opened her tunic and stepped halfway into the shower, shutting her eyes against the pressure waves as it ground the dirt out of her hair and off her exposed skin, leaving it tingling and pink. She left it on for a few minutes more after she got out, arranging her clothing and makeshift weapons carefully, taking slow, deep breaths, grasping at the pressure building up inside.

 _Work for me, damn you,_ she thought. _There’s only two of them. I’m what, three compartments away from the bridge?_ She froze.

_The bridge..._

Rey smiled slowly. The panic and pressure sharpened, her veins flooding with fresh fire. She moved her hand to her tunic, gripping the hilt of the hidden blade.

_Time to go._

 

*

 

The guards opened the door as soon as she shut off the sonic, huffing in disappointment when they realized that she was fully clothed. 

“I’m done,” she whispered, pulling her arms in close to her sides, keeping her eyes on the ground. It was only partially an act – in close quarters, without the leather vest, she felt almost naked under their gaze.

“Come on,” the human raider grunted, and hustled her down the corridor, his partner spewing obscene advice in three different languages. 

Rey tuned out the words and silently counted doors as she stumbled along, focusing her awareness on the rough grip on her arm, the heavy footfalls of the Zabrak leading the way. 

Finally, they rounded a corner. Cerebos’ quarters on the left, the bridge on the right. Rey stumbled, jerking her captor forward – 

\-- Just far enough for her to drive her heel into his crotch. 

The human screamed and shoved her away as the tiny metal shards cut through leather. Rey sprang forward, using the extra momentum to take down the Zabrak ahead of her, vibroblade in hand, smashing his knee with her boot just as she drove the blade into his back. She was up again in a flash, wincing as dark blood gushed over her fingers when she pulled the blade out. 

The bridge was unlocked, the engine running. And _kriffing Force_ the coolant gauge was in the red. Rey pulled up the status screen with shaking fingers. 

_Those idiots,_ she thought. In an attempt to marry a TIE control interface with a Hutt barge (among other things), whoever had built the _Cyclops_ had linked the fuel system to the coolant pumps, separating the coolant and fuel with only a slender polymer shield. The only logical reason to do that was if the fuel system had a serious overheating problem, and needed to bleed off everything they could before it hit the engine. 

And the coolant pumps were practically sucking air.

Rey laughed aloud and locked the cockpit door, ignoring the spreading pool of blood. 

The bastards had it coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Rey is basically space MacGyver. It's already canon! #ibypassedthecompressor  
> 2\. I am handwaving them not searching Rey too closely based on a combination of her nascent mind-meld abilities and the grunts not wanting to piss off their boss. They have no idea what she's capable of, at this point...  
> 3\. Also, yes, Rey, you CAN do it again. And it was self defense, yet again. Tactics are one thing, but you're not a cold-blooded killer. ;_;  
> 4\. I've been wondering why in the hell Rey's ONLY WEAPON on an obviously dangerous planet was a freaking STAFF. Yes, you can cause some pretty serious damage, but it's not going to help you much if someone tries to use a ranged weapon...Ok this train of thought is too big to put here. [Click for a long blog post about Rey's life on Jakku and her self-defense technique. ](http://lightpoint.dreamwidth.org/5195.html#cutid1)


	8. End of the Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey puts her hard-won mechanical expertise to good use, faces a moral conundrum, and earns herself a very dangerous enemy.

Zuvio set down the macrobinoculars and commed Streehn. He was standing watch on top of the Militia bunkhouse, eyes trained on the smoke cloud rising up between the _Inflictor_ and the _Ravager._ The fighting seemed to have died down, but the cracks in the hull of the smaller wreck were belching red flame. 

It didn’t look like the Clan was going to get away this time. 

“It looks good up here, Boss,” said Streehn, his voice crackling on the comm. He was stationed in a watch tower near the residential area, manning one of several gun mounts. Other Militia beings were scattered around the Outpost in similar positions, weapons ready, waiting for the hammer to fall. 

“Any sign of movement?” Zuvio asked.

“No Boss,” said Streehn after a brief pause. “I think – _shavit –“_

Silence on the comm.

“Streehn? Streehn come in?” Ice settled into Zuvio’s gut. He cranked up the macrobinoculars to the highest setting. _Shavit._ Three heavy grav barges were rumbling towards the smoke, clumsy and huge, thanks to the oversized cargo holds. 

Slave transports. 

_Hold the line,_ Zuvio thought, as bile rose in his throat. There were over five hundred beings in the Outpost, huddled in the storehouse, waiting for the end.

“Boss, there’s – “

“I see them,” he said. “Hold position.”

He watched the barges dock near the _Inflictor_ with unadulterated loathing.

_Someday…_

 

*

 

Rey giggled as she surveyed the bridge.

 _What is the_ Force _is this asshole trying to do?_ she thought. 

Most of the _Cyclops’_ main control block had been scavenged from an Imperial TIE fighter. The seat was crushed right up against the console, and while the support and control position _was_ ideal for hairpin maneuverability on a tiny, shieldless, single-seat TIE, smacking that control interface onto the hulking mass of parts that was Cerebos’ ship was just…Inefficient. 

She hadn’t been able to see much of the rest of the ship, so whatever they’d used to link the TIE controls to the rest of it was a mystery. But to get the kind of maneuverability that she knew the _Cyclops_ could handle…It was probably both powerful and, (given the sorts of tech that was available on the planet) unstable. 

Rey smiled.

She jumped up, grabbed a pry-bar from the emergency maintenance box on her left, and wedged it in the doorframe. Just in time – shouts rang out in the corridor outside as the bodies were discovered. 

_Carbon-durasteel…That’ll hold ‘em for awhile…_ Rey thought, surveying her options. The pilot’s viewport was, like the control block, scavenged from a TIE. An odd design – the main pilot seat was nothing but a TIE ‘bubble’ with the back end cut off, the whole thing welded to the bridge of a Corellian freighter, possible a YT or Zel model. The bridge as a whole was big enough to hold 6 or 8 humanoids, and had chairs spaced around the array of instruments and transparisteel viewports that lined the bulkhead. Rey whistled, impressed in spite of herself. Clearly the overall design practicality and efficiency had been sacrificed in the name of offensive capabilities. She spotted an advanced thermal and electric pulse position array, a hunter-killer missile battery GUI, and a host of other tech that she had only seen intact on her schematics, and old datapad readouts. 

A hulking, dangerous beast. She wouldn’t want to face it in combat.

Her eyes flicked to the status screen. 

_Time to break its back._

 

*

 

The Clan younglings filed more-or-less obediently into the first transport as Cerebos looked on, satisfaction curling warmly in his chest. Minnie had divided them roughly by age – it was hard to tell with some species – and armed the raiders guarding the older ones with full-power force pikes. Nearly every Jakku native learned how to fight almost before they could walk – most raiders learned the hard way not to turn their backs on the young. 

_Over three dozen under twelve Standard,_ he thought. _Nearly seventy, all in all…_  
Several of their youngest fighters had survived as well, knocked unconscious during the initial hull breach, or simply overlooked during the initial sweep of the _Inflictor’s_ compartments. He estimated that a handful of them would be useful, when properly motivated. They’d sell the others.

_A good day._

He nodded at Rathor, who stepped up eagerly and took his rifle. 

“I think we’re done here,” he said. “Form up, and head back to the _Ravager._ And those – “ He paused at the foot of the on-ramp to the _Cyclops,_ and pointed at the surviving warriors chained to the barge rail. “Shoot them.”

He headed up the ramp, mind already buzzing with the possibilities that the day’s raid had granted. His advance guard had found a cache of high-grade energy weapons in one of the inner compartments of the _Inflictor,_ as well as a number of more portable models out on one of their vehicles, clearly fresh from offworld. 

He wondered how the scum had managed to get three Empire-era blaster cannons up and running. 

It might be time to see just how much abuse the Niima energy field could take. 

He was halfway to the bridge when he paused, frowning. The deck plates were humming with their usual tenor. The remote status readout gauge he’d fastened to his wrist was all green.

_Then why is it so hot in here?_

His unease grew as he continued down the corridor, into an oppressive silence. 

“Vim! Joelle – “ His shout was cut off by a deafening explosion. The deck rocked underneath his feet, throwing him against the bulkhead. Panicked shouts rose up, and the pound of boots on durasteel thundered towards him. Dimly he felt hands grasp his arms and haul him to his feet. 

_What in the Sith Hells –_

 

*

 

Rey sprinted from one side of the bridge to the other, re-routing power from compartment to compartment, keeping the flood of overheated fuel moving. Board after board went yellow, then red, until overheat warnings were blaring from every corner of the bridge. She ripped a length of heavy-gauge wire out of the overhead, looped it up, and slung it over her shoulder, wishing that she’d been able to hang onto her utility belt.

 _Better than nothing…_ She’d need it if she was going to make it out. As with the one on the _Gorgon,_ the _Cyclops’_ escape hatch would open far too high off the ground for her to make the jump without breaking something. She snatched up a small laser-cutter from the utility compartment for good measure. The vibroblade was well and good, but having a backup weapon was _always_ a good idea.

The pounding on the bridge door intensified, then quieted. The unmistakable whine of a plasma cutter cut through the bridge. Rey’s heart leaped into her throat. 

_Time to go._

She darted to the primary generator controls and cranked the power to max, frying the local fuzes. She took a deep breath, her heart hammering, and counted out thirty seconds. 

_Now -_

Rey slammed the remote engine activation rod into its slot, and sprinted for the escape hatch.

She was halfway down the ladder when the explosion rocked the ship.

 

*

 

The fire spread quickly. Soon smoke choked the corridors, driving Cerebos to the deck, cursing his decision to leave his emergency air pack in his cabin. Screams filled the air as the slower guards went down under the wave of blistering heat. The exit hatch was in sight when a second explosion ripped a hole in the overhead, drenching two humans and a Togruta in boiling oil, burning the skin from their bones instantly. 

The smell of cooking meat filled the air. Cerebos’ anger rose, black and toxic, a pounding roar in his skull. 

Whoever did this was going to _pay._

 

*

 

Rey swallowed dryly.

 _Well, this is bad._

The escape hatch was higher off the ground than she’d expected. Not by much, luckily – while she hadn’t been able to measure the length of wire she’d scavenged, she knew that she’d only fallen short by a couple feet. Nothing she couldn’t handle. 

The problem was the utter chaos raging on all sides. Screams filled the air as the Clan prisoners tied to the rail pulled frantically at their bonds, trying to get away from the fire. Cerebos’ troops were either frozen with shock or stumbling from transport to transport, snatching up weapons and casting around wildly for something to shoot. One of the officers was slowly rounding them up, cursing a blue streak. A female human herded several of the calmer raiders onto one of the barges, practically throwing a Zabrak into the control chamber for the fire suppression system, brandishing a force pike at anyone who tried to throw her off. And in the meantime, dozens of raiders were headed straight for the _Cyclops._

It was only going to get worse. She had to get out.

Fast.

And in the meantime, the metal beneath her was growing hot.

Rey cast around frantically, squinting through the smoke. Finally she spotted a line of abandoned speeders resting on a slab of wreckage close to the still-smoldering gash in the side of the _Inflictor…_ Right on the other side of the cluster of Clan prisoners. There was no way she was getting past them undetected.

_Shavit…_

Then a shout rose up – fire belched from the entry hatch, and Rey held on for dear life as the ship swayed drunkenly from side to side. 

_No choice._ She tied the cable to the exit ladder, and jumped.

 

*

 

 _No such thing as luck. No such thing as luck,_ Rey thought as she ran past a half dozen raiders, all of whom ignored her, and dived behind a pile of scrap metal, three yards from the group of prisoners. _It’s getting dark. There’s smoke everywhere. They didn’t see me. They’ve got other priorities…_

…Which apparently did _not_ include the prisoners. All of the guards were gone, and the prisoners were clawing at the cables binding them to the wreckage. Rey risked a closer look, and immediately saw why. Fuel was seeping from the _Cyclops,_ slicking up everything in its path, the ever-widening pool growing closer to the fire every second. 

_They’re going to die,_ Rey thought. 

An icy shiver ran through her. 

_I should leave…_

The speeders were _right there._

_They’ll fight me for them,_ she thought, her heart suddenly aching. _Tear me to shreds. They want to_ live. 

The man closest to the fire began to scream. 

_Fuck it._

Rey darted forward, staying low, moving from shadow to shadow, now black as pitch, writhing violently in the red light of the fire. She jumped the flimsy barrier keeping the prisoners corralled, and pulled the laser cutter out of her tunic. 

“Move!” she yelled, shoving the screaming warrior away from the rail. The cable holding him was already glowing with conducted heat. She sliced it easily. The closest five prisoners pulled free and stared at her, open-mouthed. 

_“Go!”_ she cried, and sprinted for the other cable, hefting the laser cutter threateningly when a Twi’lek tried to snatch it out of her hands. 

There were three cables in total. Rey worked as quickly as she could and kept her eyes on the speeders. Strangely, no one seemed to be headed there. Instead they pushed at the barrier and hauled their comrades up, patting each other down to check for injuries and concealed weapons. Waiting. 

Rey found out why when she got to the end of the line. A Chiss male had been separated from the group, and had an entire length of cable all to himself, along with a set of magnetic binders. An ugly, heavy chain was wrapped around his neck, securing him to the rail, arching his back painfully. The prisoners stilled as she cut him loose, and stood quietly, watching her intently.

“Kriff,” she muttered, grasping him by the arms as he swayed alarmingly. “Come on…”

He recovered himself quickly, and pushed her away, leaning instead on the wreckage, panting roughly. Rey backed up slowly, keeping her eyes moving. No one seemed to be watching her.

“Well…Bye then!” she said. 

Rey jumped over the rail and sprinted towards the speeders. No one followed. 

As luck would have it, she found the custom rig that she’d stolen almost immediately. The fuel tank was almost full, the power was on, and no one had bothered to secure it. 

She gunned the accelerator, and roared off into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Cerebos survives. The _Cyclops_ does not  >:)  
> 2\. Zuvio has had enough of this shit.  
> 3\. I just made up a load of stuff about spaceship engineering. [Some sort of fuel overheat + electrical surge = explosion. ](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArtisticLicenseEngineering)  
> 4\. She's FINALLY getting back to Sidious. YAY


	9. Homeward Bound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey takes her new friend home. Just in time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY. I'm sorry for the long-ass time between updates...Mea Culpa. My 'muse' has a few different irons in the fire, but I definitely haven't forgotten this 'verse.

Rey flew as low as she could without flooding the engines with sand, and clung to every spot of cover that she could find. The moon was waning, and the wind was high, so she had the darkness to hide her and the roar of a sandstorm to muffle the engines. 

Her heart still leaped into her throat at every unexpected sound, or black flicker in the barren Waste. 

But she made it to the _Gorgon_ without being spotted. 

_Should be safe,_ she thought. The _Gorgon_ was far enough below the surface to escape notice, and given the remote location, the odds of it being discovered accidently were slim. But still…

_It’s MINE._

Rage surged up inside her, fueled by adrenaline, fear. Her fatigue vanished. The world snapped into sharp, icy clarity. She laughed away the ache in her knees, the raw skin on her wrists, the bruises on her arms from hands and fists. A minor setback, that was all.

She hid the speeder under an outcropping of rock, covering the shiny, exposed exhaust pipes with a tarp the previous owner had stashed under the seat. She found the line she’d rigged up with ease, despite the dark, and danced down the rope, barely bothering to hold the wall for support. 

The luminescent tape she’d left behind guided her to the central turbolift with ease. Rey travelled fast, unburdened by pack or climbing equipment, one thought in her mind; _get him out._

Everything else was just _details._

The main turbolift was still dead from the upper decks, but she was _sure,_ somehow, that she’d be able to get it going from down below. She climbed down into the dark as quickly as she could, never missing a hand or foothold, efficient and sure, and all but ran to the med bay when she hit bottom. She rushed by the bodies without a second thought - the bilge, the death-soaked air was nothing, not compared to what was topside. 

He was awake when she entered, had adjusted the cot so that he could sit up. He gripped the handrails and leaned towards her as she rummaged through the storage closet, his eyes narrowing as he took in her wide eyes and sharp fingers. 

“What happened?”

Rey almost jumped out of her skin. His voice was much stronger than before, and full of concern. Deep. Personal. 

The jagged rage binding her fear slipped. She sagged against the bulkhead, her vision blurring.

_No…_

Somehow she straightened. Her fingers closed on a thick cloth strap.

_Cry when you’re safe._

“I’ll tell you later. We’re getting out of here.” Rey snatched up the straps, set them down next to the stretcher, and pulled her multitool out of the bag she’d left near the partially-disassembled stasis tube. She picked up the sledgehammer for good measure. “I’ll be right back.”

“Rey – “

“Thirty minutes,” she heard herself say, and headed for the turbolift. 

 

*

 

She was done in twenty. 

_Well, mostly._ The manual control she’d rigged up with scrap metal, her welding torch, and lots and lots of high-grade engine tape wouldn’t hold for long. But it’d get them up a few decks to the working turbolift she’d found when she was exploring. _I’ll fix it for real later._

She stumbled across an Old Imperial top-grade chainfall in the storage room, close to where she’d found the welding torch and flux; a far better model than the one she’d bought from Vona.

_Vona…_

A cold hand closed over her heart.

_She wouldn’t…would she?_

Rey had never seen those particular offworlders before. The regulars knew not to come after her – Plutt’s goons saw to that – But sometimes beings with more greed than sense saw her stash, and only registered her as a skinny girl with a pretty face. _Prey._

_No…_

But she couldn’t dwell on it, not now. Rey stashed the chainfall, extra climbing rope, and a heavy blanket in the lift, and headed back for her friend.

 

*

 

The hardest part was convincing him to take the sedative. 

“I won’t move,” he bit out. His eyes cut her to the core. Fear spiked out of nowhere, burying cold claws into her nerves. For a moment, she wanted nothing more than to throw the sedative away, to just carry him on her back, in her arms, he’d be so light…

“You won’t _survive,”_ she snapped instead. “I don’t care how tired you are. You’ll tense up. You’ll fight me. You’ll _move._ And I’ll drop you.” Her voice failed her. “Please. I’ve moved heavier things than you, and further than we have to go, but they were static, and…Please.”

_Please trust me._

Slowly, the cold faded. The man sagged against the mattress and shut his eyes, breathing deep.

“Just don’t put me under,” he said at last, his voice dropping to a whisper. Rey leaned closer, her hand slipping to the guard rail. “If I…If something happens, I want to be awake.” She nodded, a lump welling up in her throat, and reached for his hand.

“I won’t,” she said. She pressed his fingers as gently as she could. The skin was softer than before, more responsive. She could still feel the bones, but they had blood and motion. He was coming alive. “This will just relax you a bit.” 

His fingers tightened under her, digging into the sheet. But he nodded.

“Do it.”

She took his wrist, found a pulse, and prodded his neck carefully, looking for a vein, keeping the hypo injector in plain sight. He flinched as she finally pressed the cold metal to his skin. Rey took a deep breath.

“All right. On three. One…” She activated it. “Sorry…” 

His pulse surged violently under her fingers. Rey cried out as his chest heaved, and he surged halfway off of the mattress, his other hand whipping out to grasp ineffectually at her tunic. She caught his hand and looped her arm around his shoulders, holding him steady.

It took longer than she’d expected. Rey had wrestled with the dosage for some time; He was so thin that the standard dose for an adult male would likely kill him, but his system was too well-developed for a child dose to be effective…Eventually she’d diluted it to half-strength, and prayed that it would be enough to keep him relaxed (very relaxed) but awake. 

Several tense minutes later, the last of the tension bled out of his thin body. He slumped limply against the pillows, an odd little smile playing across his thin lips, humming a low jumble of notes. 

_Thank the Force…_ She’d thought for a moment that he was going to fight her after all.

Rey waited for his breath to go quiet, and his heart to settle. Then she tucked him into a hospital robe, oddly careful of his modesty, and lifted him onto the stretcher. She covered him with a sheet, tucking him in up to his shoulders, and strapped him in as securely as she could without binding his limbs. _Just in case._ He was light enough for her to cut him loose, and carry to safety, but only if she had to. She wouldn’t be able to use the chainfall if she lost the stretcher…

_Do. Not. Dwell. Focus on the now._

Rey smoothed down the edge of the sheet, adjusting it so that the edge wouldn’t scrape his exposed skin any more that it had to. She’d chosen the softest, thickest sheet that she could find, but there wasn’t much that she could do about the pinch of the straps. 

_He’ll bruise,_ she thought. But she didn’t have much of a choice. 

“It’ll be ok,” she whispered, checking his pulse one last time. His eyes moved rapidly under thin eyelids. 

_Not asleep, just relaxed,_ she reminded herself. _It will be fine._

Rey screwed up her courage, twisted the rage around her core, and wheeled him into the turbolift.

 

*

 

The next three hours were the most terrifying of Rey’s life. As expected, the lift gave out on her 40 decks up. Only her years of experience navigating wrecks in worse shape than the _Gorgon_ saved them from falling to their deaths. She smashed the auto-close mechanism with her sledgehammer as the deck rocked beneath her feet, braced the door open, and pushed the stretcher into the blacked-out corridor. 

She was three yards from the lift when it dropped like a stone. She didn’t even hear it hit bottom.

“And now, for Phase 2,” she whispered, tossing a magnesium flare down the corridor. The man mumbled a low reply, a light crease furrowing his forehead. Rey smiled a little, despite the adrenaline rocketing through her blood. “Just what I knew you’d say…”

It was slow going. She hadn’t mapped out the deck, but the schematic she’d dug out of the supply hold said that there was an emergency turbolift (with full manual capability) on the far side. Fortunately she’d found replacements for both her head and wrist lights, and had rigged up a makeshift red filter for both. Going off of the chronometer in the med bay, it was well past dawn. She could do without the shock to her vision when they hit daylight. 

But they made it, albeit with a few bumps along the way. Like the others -- and, as Rey was coming to suspect, the rest of the ship – the deck was free of both bodies and wreckage. Even the lighting panels looked intact.

 _If I can get the power running, I might even be able to get them working,_ she thought, possibilities playing through her mind as she wrenched open the lift doors. _Ok, six decks…_

 

*

 

She was right about the sun. Heat and light blasted the corridor when Rey cracked open the escape hatch. The man gave a low cry and squeezed his eyes shut. His body twisted painfully as he struggled to escape the stretcher.

_“It hurts – my eyes – “_

Rey rushed over and covered them with her hands, shielding him from the sun with her body. 

“I’m sorry!” she whispered, thinking fast. She hadn’t thought it would be _this_ bad; he trembled under her hands, his thin skin already reddening. _He’s going to burn…_

“We’ll wait a few hours,” she said finally, after he’d calmed. She wheeled him further into the corridor, not _quite_ out of the sun, but enough to let his eyes adjust slowly. “But we need to go during the day – being out at night is – we just don’t want to be out at night.” 

No response. Not that she’d been expecting one. 

 

*

 

They waited until the sun glowed orange. _Dusk._ Rey took a deep breath and shook him awake. 

“We’re heading out,” she murmured. “Just hold still for a little bit longer…” She dug a bottle of protective ointment she’d scavenged from the med bay, and smeared a generous layer on his exposed skin. He winced as she smoothed it across his prominent nose. “You’ll thank me later.”

“How old _is_ this?” he asked hoarsely. “It smells like burned plastisteel.”

“Um...It’s not expired, I checked,” said Rey, swallowing. It was very definitely not the time for _that_ conversation. 

Finally, he was covered to her satisfaction. She checked his pulse, breathing a sigh of relief at the slow, strong beat. As far as she could tell, he was still pretty out of it.

“I’ll be right back,” she said. “I need to set this up.” She hefted the chainfall over her shoulder. “Um, I was going to do this before I came down here, but…” 

He cocked an eyebrow, blue eyes suddenly sharp. 

“What happened?” Rey winced.

“Long story. I’ll tell you later…But we’re wasting daylight.” She snagged the rope she’d left behind, and climbed towards the sun.

 

*

 

 _I was wrong._ This _is the hardest part._

Setting up the chainfall had gone smoothly. It was really just a series of pullies and a durasteel cable with a hook on the end – perfect for hauling large loads. And it was manually controlled – no power required. She tested it by shimmying down the cable, reasoning that if it could support her weight, it could hold the stretcher.

Everything was ready. She lashed the stretcher to the cable and hook with the extra straps and moved it to the edge of the hatch, making sure it stayed as stable and horizontal as possible. 

Then it was the moment of truth. 

“All right,” she said. “I’m going to climb back up and – and –“ She shivered. _Why am I afraid?_ “I’m going to pull you up. With that.” She pointed up at the chainfall, barely visible up on the edge of the drop. “It will be all right,” she said, not sure if it was to herself or to him.

Rey barely caught the response, the smile.

“I know…”

_You can do this._

Rey set her jaw, checked the straps one last time, and climbed back up.

 

*

 

It worked. She turned the crank slowly, carefully, making sure the cable didn’t get caught up in the pully chain. Incredulous hope grew in her breast, spreading rapidly when he was halfway up, and flamed high and wild when the edge of the stretcher appeared over the cliff side. 

Then came a deafening _crack._ The ground rocked underneath her, cracks spidering along the edge of the cliff, slicing straight for the chainfall.

_NO --_

Rey cried out and threw herself on the crank. The cable jerked wildly, dropping the stretcher down several feet. Screaming now, Rey grabbed at the cable, oblivious to the metal ripping into her skin as three straps snapped, spilling the stretcher onto its side, its occupant flopping like a rag doll against the remaining restraints.

He was close enough to touch.

Somehow -- _somehow --_ he stayed on. Rey kicked the chainfall, snatched the laser cutter out of her tunic, and threw her full weight onto the cable. She ripped off the sheet, cut the remaining straps, and hauled him over the edge of the cliff, ignoring the pain in her hands, raw terror grinding in her heart. He lay limp, boneless, on the hard ground, blood trickling from a cut on his forehead, his face slack, dazed. 

The laser cutter hit the ground, slippery with blood. She stared at her raw hands, at the puddle of red on the ground, the pale man trembling at her side. Rey pressed her face into the rock and sobbed. 

 

*

 

The ride home was a blur. When she could move again, Rey doused her hands in ethanol, scrubbed out the grit, and wrapped them with Bacta bandages. She strapped his trembling body into the seat next to her, and covered him with a heavy tarp. 

Rey flew as low to the ground as she could, careful not to clog the engines. She stuck to the lengthening shadows, and watched the horizon, her senses lashing out at every strange shape; she knew that she wouldn’t survive an ambush.

And it wasn’t just her. Not anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Sidious is the Master of playing possum.  
> 2\. Rey is Space MacGyver!  
> 3\. AND NOW, MORE PLOT  
> 4\. [This is a chainfall. ](https://www.google.com/search?q=chainfall&client=opera&hs=Ese&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwib7fLW_enPAhUD0iYKHU9IDY8Q_AUICSgC&biw=1424&bih=921)


	10. Interlude: Houseguest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey brings her new friend home, and tries to figure out what to do next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a part at the beginning that references [Chapter 1 of Indulge. ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7068865/chapters/16068250)You'll know it if you've read it...  
>  **EDIT 1/30/17:** Damn it this was really rough when I first posted it - I've edited it a whole bunch. Sorry!

The man passed out as soon as Rey powered down the engine. She cursed sharply, loudly, and filthily. 

If she’d brought the _other_ chainfall up from the Gorgon… Or at least thought to rig up a ramp before she’d gone to Niima. Or --

 _And while I’m dreaming, I’d like an X-Wing,_ she thought, slumping over the speeder controls. _He probably wouldn’t have made it up the ladder anyway..._ The entry hatch to the section of the _Hellhound II_ that she’d made habitable was six feet off the ground, and accessible via a thin, but sturdy, chain-link ladder. Normally, it wasn't even remotely a problem. She made her living climbing around rotting wrecks, after all. But she was shaking with fatigue and –- maybe –- shock. 

And then there was Red.

Yes, she’d decided to call him ‘Red.’ She had to call him _something, and_ given the faint prickle of bright red hair on his scalp…well, it would have to do until he told her his real name.

_If he even remembers..._

She wasn’t stupid. Rey had scanned what was left of the med-bay computer systems while he was asleep. The status screens for the med tanks had been full of status codes, vital statistics, and numbers...But no name, no medical history, not even a few lines about his position aboard the ship. In fact, there was barely any Aurebesh at all, and certainly no Basic, or High Galactic, or…

Rey’s jaw clenched.

 _Not that it’d be much good to me…_ She knew the symbols and shapes that made up ‘Unkar Plutt’ in Huttese. She’d seen what ‘Rey’ looked like in Huttese, once, when Plutt had written it out for her. She could recognize her name in Basic and Aurebesh too...Vona had made her sound it out. She'd made her practice until she could write it out, and recognize it later. And that was about it.

An ache grew in Rey's heart, heavy and unwelcome. Vona –- and one or two of the older scavengers, after much begging and bribery -- had taught her what little she knew about the written word. Small stuff, mostly. Useful words, that would help when she was digging through piles of refuse and scrap. Words like _Rations,_ and _Expires on,_ or _Supply Hold._ Lots of curse words too. But they’d taught her. Raised her, really...and Vona had taught her the most. The old woman (not so old, then) would shake Rey awake when she shook and cried in the night, lost in the howl of voices. Vona suffered her presence better than most of the others, had let her tag along at market, had let her sit and listen. Teaching.

She'd offered...comfort, of a sort, when Rey became a woman.

_And now I know what a decade of friendship is worth,_ Rey thought bitterly. _But I thought, I hoped…_

No matter. The last two days hadn’t taught her anything that, in her heart of hearts, she hadn’t already known.

Rey had picked up the rest of her limited vocabulary from ship schematics. She could recognize ‘lux wavelength,’ ‘graviton bypass,’ and ‘aerodynamic retrograde shift’ in Huttese, Basic, and Aurebesh, and know exactly what they meant. Over the years, she gathered up the pieces of Word in her mind, and strung the ones that she knew together, filling in the blanks with her mind. 

So she _could_ read, she told herself. After a fashion. 

It didn’t always work, though. Basic was especially unforgiving when it came to link-words, context, and punctuation. Rey knew that she had a lot of catching up to do, but given that _survival_ took first priority, she usually didn't give it much more than a passing thought, but...

 _What will_ he _think?_

Maybe it wouldn’t come up. For all she knew Red could be just as poor a reader as she was.

 _Ask him again when he’s conscious,_ she thought. _One step at a time, Rey._ In the meantime, she had to get him inside. 

She half-dragged, half-carried him through her back door; a mostly-clear cargo hold at the rear of the AT-AT. After quick, bruising stumble through the cramped corridors, she laid him down with a _huff_ of relief on a swath of packing foam in her kitchen.

But she couldn't relax just yet. First came the hatches (locked), then a check of the perimeter scanner (all clear), and finally the environment controls (up and running). Rey grinned at the last -- she was especially proud of the air ionizer. It kept the air in the _Hellhound II_ free and clear when she had to hunker down during a sandstorm, or hide from bandits. 

Rey had just completed her rounds when she happened to glance down at herself. 

_Oh._

She was filthy. They both were. Thanks to their trek through the _Gorgon,_ nearly falling to their deaths, and the speeder ride, they were both sporting an impressive layer of grime. More worryingly, they were covered with scratches, bruises, and small cuts; nothing major, but the possibility of infection was alarming all the same. Especially for Red...

Rey bit her lip. The stranger could barely sit up, much less wash himself. She'd have to help. 

_He's injured,_ she thought, standing over his limp, bruised body. _He needs help. You're just doing what a doctor would do. Don't turn it into something that it's not._

Her fingers still shook when she knelt next to him, and slung his arm over her shoulders. 

Rey had refitted the AT-AT’s tiny ‘fresher shortly after she had moved in so that it drained into a water purification unit; just a simple filter and UV radiator that separated out the dirt and saved the leftover water in a tank above the sanitation unit. Vaguely, she thought of the luxurious refresher back in the _Gorgon’s_ med bay. It was far larger, in much better shape, and doubtlessly better equipped for this...

_Enough stalling._

Rey helped him walk on shaky legs into the shower, pretending at calm as she helped him with the ties of his light robe. More hesitation, and then she removed her own clothes with brisk, businesslike hands, avoiding his eyes, keeping her face carefully blank. He’d slumped against the wall by the time she had hung up her tunic. His eyes were shut tight.

“Not looking,” he said quietly, that half-smile curling on the edge of his lips.

“Such a gentleman,” said Rey, somehow feeling both reassured and more naked than before. Still...It made it easier to push away the shiver, the sharp static behind her eyes, and to focus on the task at hand. 

She wound up at Red’s back, supporting him with one hand, scrubbing as gently as she could with the other. After a few moments, he let out a sigh that shook him from head to toe.

“I never thought I’d feel this again,” Red murmured. He rolled his shoulders and neck, wincing as the vertebrae popped. Rey paused, feeling his body move under her hands, suddenly very aware of the warm water caressing her skin.

“Has it been a long time?” she asked, stepping closer to steady him, her breath oddly thin.

“Yes,” he said, his voice rumbling deep in his chest. 

“Can you lift your arm?” asked Rey, swallowing dryly. His skin shivered and puckered as she ran the cloth along his flank. Then the light shifted, and she spotted something. It was…spots?

“You have _freckles?”_

Red groaned with exasperation.

“I thought I covered you up enough – these are all over your shoulders.” Rey leaned in to get a closer look.

Another sigh. 

“...They come with the hair.”

“Hey, that’s growing back too,” said Rey. Her knuckles brushed against bright red, prickly stubble slowly forming on the back of his skull. “I’ve never seen that color before…” Red chuckled.

“Trust me, it’s natural.”

She finished his back quickly.

“We can’t do this all the time, you know,” she said when she started on his chest, keeping her eyes firmly on his face. The warm water had given his face a light flush, highlighting his sharp cheekbones. He was less gaunt than she remembered. He was actually rather…

“Is it the water?” Red murmured, tilting his head to give her better access to his neck. Rey nodded. 

“Once you’re better we’re going to have to hold off for awhile…Since there’s two of us drinking it, we’ll need to store it up.”

Red nodded. 

_Well, at least he understands._

Rey had a feeling that bathing in lukewarm water in a tiny, rusted cubicle was not exactly the norm for him. But it wasn't the _Gorgon._ He was out of the med-bay, out in the world. And she was reasonably sure that he was, for the moment, enjoying himself. 

And there it was; a small smile. 

It was probably a nice change. 

 

*

 

When they were both clean, she wrapped him from head to foot in her lightest –- and finest –- sheet, and half led, half carried him to her bed. Well, her _nest,_ really. Years of living on her own meant that most of her creature comforts were concentrated in one place. The walls were papered with ship schematics, the corners piled up with half-finished projects and plans. Her spare tunic and clean underthings were hanging from a length of twine strung between two storage cabinets.

Every surface she could spare was covered in green. Her one little spine flower had become two, and then seven, and shared space with snatches of moss, vines, and even _weeds,_ all native Jakku plant life.

She flushed, oddly nervous -– _protective_ –- as her guest stilled against her, and craned his neck, taking everything in. 

“This might be a bit more comfortable for you,” she said, to break the silence. She settled him down carefully, fluffing up a pillow beneath his head, and stretching his legs out flat. He was a bit taller than her, but there was still room…

“How so?” 

“Well… It’s dark. And inside.”

He paused, and smiled that little half smile. 

“True.” He shifted slightly, fingers fiddling with the cloth.

 _He doesn’t like being all bound up like this,_ she thought suddenly. No, she _knew._

Rey leaned in and loosened the sheet without thinking. He looked up at her gratefully, flexing his thin arms. Rey's eyes widened; his pale skin was striped with thick purple bruises, doubtlessly thanks to the straps on the stretcher. 

That wouldn't do.

She jumped up and headed towards the door, remembering halfway there that she had company. You didn’t just get up and leave when you had company…

“I’ll be right back! Stay there,” she blurted, reddening the second she said it and realized how ridiculous it sounded. “Just…Don’t…” Rey gave up and retreated to the kitchen. 

He was dozing when she returned with the protective ointment and a fresh roll of bandages and -– _Force_ she could barely believe it -- a box of clean plasti-sutures.

“Hey," she whispered. “Are you asleep?” One pale eye flicked open. Again, that smile.

“Do you mind if I…” She held up the jar. “It will hurt less now, and your skin…” Rey winced and waved vaguely at the bruises, and at the red, flaking patches flaring up on his shoulders, arms, and around his hairline. The freckles would be the least of his worries if she didn't apply it now.

He groaned, but nodded and shifted further onto his back. 

“Sunburns go with the hair too,” he muttered. "And the bruising..." 

“I’ll be careful,” she whispered. “But it’s probably not going to be very – “

“It’s quite all right,” he said faintly. "I've had worse."

Rey slid next to him, a strange flutter in her stomach. The soft sigh that fell from his lips when she smoothed the ointment down his arm did _not_ help.

 _Well, at least he’s healing,_ she thought, remembering the shuddering whine when she’d done the same thing back on the Gorgon before their disastrous ascent. _Maybe it was the shower…Maybe I just couldn’t see how much better he was doing under all the dirt…_ And even if it wasn’t, he certainly seemed more relaxed. Peaceful, almost... Rey frowned, and dragged her focus from the angles of his face, the gentle pulse of blood underneath his skin, back to her task.

Or maybe it _was_ the shower…Which Rey considered a good sign. She always felt better after a good wash. A lot of Niima residents just didn’t bother… Why waste water to get clean when you are just going to get filthy again? 

Once she moved out, and noticed, Rey had never been able to go inside Plutt’s bunkhouse without being overwhelmed by the stench. Once she started bathing regularly, she started to notice things like the itch of days of dirt on her body, and the sharp pain of peeling skin after standing too long in the sun, or the burn of hot metal on her bare feet in the scrapyard…Strange, the things she’d noticed when it occurred to her to look.

The fact that her houseguest appeared to share her feelings on the subject was a good sign. Ray didn’t think that she could live with someone who never bathed.

 _Not again anyway,_ she thought. _In fact it might be –_

 _Really, Rey?_ Rey frowned, the tumble of her thoughts grinding to a stop. _He’s not a friend. He’ll probably bail as soon as he can walk..._

She set down the salve.

Red’s eyes fluttered open.

“Rey? What’s wrong?”

She swallowed.

“Nothing. I’m just tired. Does –-“ She fiddled with the bedsheet, and gestured vaguely at his torso. “Does this hurt?” He smiled, showing a line of white, even teeth.

“No more than I’d expect,” he said dryly. “But..." Her guest gave a long yawn. “Sorry. Tired…”

“Me too…I'm going to put this back.” Rey stood quickly, and backed away. 

Red nodded, eyes already closed. 

 

*

 

Rey hesitated at the side of the bed, wondering whether or not she should wake him. 

He was injured, so obviously he got the bed. No question of that. But…

Rey shivered. She had a few extra blankets, so she _could_ just roll up into a ball on the floor next to the bed. She could keep an eye on him, watch the door. But it was just so _cold,_ and her bed was big enough for both of them. But, still, she couldn’t get her legs to move.

 _You showered with him,_ Rey thought, annoyed with herself. _You’re acting like a child. Look, he can barely walk on his own. And he’s asleep…_

_Kriff it._

She slid under the blanket next to him, held her arms firmly at her sides, and listened to him breathe. 

 

* 

 

Rey lay as still as a stone, tense, waiting, her body strung as tight as a strangle-wire, waiting for him to move. Her mind swam with conflicting thoughts, her skin crawling with sense memory.

The last time she’d had someone this close – well, he hadn’t been lying down, had he?

Her chest spasmed involuntarily. She suppressed the urge to spring off of the bed and run.

And yet. Somewhere deep down inside herself, an old, nearly forgotten memory stirred. A solid, warm mass holding her close, the distant rumble of a safe voice, the thud of a familiar heart.

 _Not all bad,_ she reminded herself. _They’re not…_

And he never touched her. He barely moved an inch the entire night. Except to turn his head to face the wall. Giving her space.

She still kept a length of durasteel pipe within reach.

 

*

Rey woke with light in her eyes. She blinked, vaguely alarmed, until she realized that she’d slept in. The gold glow of dawn filled the Hellhound, the little leaves and sprigs of her garden catching the light, somehow greener, crisper than usual. 

_Huh._

She usually jerked awake at random intervals, and was up and about before the sun came up. Fear, dreams…Rey had given up trying to figure out why long ago. 

And she was warm. The slight jerk of surprise at the realization made the sheet fall away from her face. Frigid air snapped at her nose. She snatched the sheet back up quickly, and rolled instinctively towards the source of the heat. 

She yelped when her forehead collided with a bony shoulder blade. There was a muffled _huff_ of breath, and then a confused groan.

“…Rey?”

She flushed bright red as his long, sharp nose was suddenly less than an inch from hers. 

“Yes, it’s me!” she said, before she could think. Pale blue eyes blinked at her. 

Then her stomach gurgled. Very, very loudly.

“Oh, well…Must be time for breakfast. I don’t usually get up this late, so…Stay there!” Rey bounced out of bed, tossed her blanket in his general direction, and went in search of food. She caught a glimpse of him struggling out from under the blanket, only to give up when he realized that his legs were even more thoroughly entangled.

“Rey? Ah…Help?”

Bright mirth bubbled up inside her. 

“Be right there!” she called over her shoulder. 

_All right, I_ know _the protein paste is around here somewhere…_

 

*

 

Rey always kept a stash of food and water locked in a hidden compartment in her quarters. She’d intentionally made it difficult to get at, too, to avoid being tempted to dip into it when she went to bed hungry.

And now she was exceedingly grateful for her foresight. She’d traded half her stock of ready-to-sell parts, and her everyday stock of portions in her last, ill-fated trip to Niima. Without her stash, they’d have run out of food in a day.

It was two days before Red could stand on his own. It seemed that the ascent had consumed what little strength he managed to build up since she’d found him. Even then, she was surprised at how fast he was recovering, though he remained exceedingly pale and thin.

Well, except for the freckles… She smiled wryly. The light dusting of color on his chest and shoulders had morphed into a light brown, mottled carpet. His face, to, though not as much, thanks to the borderline excessive application of healing salve. 

His skin’s texture, though, was far more unusual than its appearance. She tried not to touch him unless she had to, but when she changed his bandages her fingertips would nevertheless brush along the lines of exposed skin. Unnaturally smooth, silken, so unlike her own rough, tanned limbs.

She attributed it to all of his time spent in the stasis tank (or was it some sort of bacta tank? How long had he been in there anyway?). It was almost translucent, like milky desert glass, worn smooth as silk by Jakku’s harsh sands.

Rey shook herself out of her wandering thoughts. More questions, for another day.

On the third day, he managed a shaky walk to the cargo bay. He refused to let her walk him back, and instead sat shakily on a piece of foam insulation, and watched her work. Life didn’t go on hold just because she had a houseguest. It was just cleaning – removing rust from a set of class 3 micro-transistors that she’d been meaning to do for awhile. Her mind was whirling too fast to risk attempting any more complex repairs, and there was something about the one-two-three soak-scrub-dry process that helped her settle into a more cool, orderly state. Things tended to just…fit together more smoothly when she was focused, and working with her hands. 

And boy, did she need it.

He didn’t say much, and his hand shook with effort when he tried to pick up as much as a screwdriver, but his pale eyes took in everything she did, tracking, absorbing. Learning.

It was obvious that he’d never learned how to dismantle any sort of machinery. However, he wasn’t completely clueless. A few side comments led her to suspect that he had experience with small craft. Well, with flying them, anyway.

 _I’ll ask him after I get a name,_ she thought.

He’d also gathered that something rather major had occurred while he’d been…Rey figured the best word for it was ‘asleep.’ Rey answered the too-casual questions -- _this is the…Jakku system, isn’t it? I think you said…Do you know the Hosnian system? Is it the sixth month? Coruscant standard, anyway…_ \-- as best as she could; Niima Outpost wasn’t exactly a font of knowledge. Fortunately, he was usually too tired to do anything except watch, and eat, and sleep. 

He grew stronger every day.

 

*

 

A week passed, and finally Rey couldn’t put it off any longer; she had to go into town. The water purification filter was nearly worn out; it had never been meant to process water for two people, and not in the quantities that Red needed to maintain his tenuous grasp on his health. They were also running dangerously low on food. Yes, there was plenty – more than plenty – in the Gorgon, but there’d been smoke on the horizon since they’d returned. The _Ravager_ was still lit up with red fire and blue plasma by night. Rey wasn’t sure what had happened to the Clan, but _somebody_ was fighting out there. She swallowed. With her old macrobinoculars on full power, she could just barely make out the black flag mounted atop the wrecked Super Star Destroyer. She couldn’t quite make it out, but a bright splash of white on the black canvas told her everything that she needed to know.

 _He’s still alive,_ she thought, tapping her fingers on the guard rail as the flag unfurled slightly, revealing the three-headed dog; Cerebos’ personal crest. _Probably most of his Army too._ And after what she’d pulled, being chained to a warlord’s bed would be the least of her worries if they caught her. 

The faces of the 30-some Clan fighters that she’d released flickered through her mind. One in particular hovered above the rest, red-eyed and fierce.

_Maybe…_

No. There wouldn’t be any help from that lot. 

She went back inside and gathered up her satchel, thinking. 

_The raiders…_

“You’re worried,” he said, looking up at her from the bed. His eyes tracked her as she paced the room, filling her satchel with parts that she was reasonably sure that Plutt would buy.

Rey shook her head distractedly. 

“No more than usual,” she said, maybe a little more gruffly than was strictly necessary. “I have to go to Niima.”

“So I gathered,” he said. “When will you be back?”

“Late,” she said, after a moment.

“Not _too_ late, I hope? You said that being out at night was…unwise.” 

“It is,” said Rey. “But it can’t be helped. I do this all the time.” 

The words _‘Don’t worry’_ were on the tip of her tongue. 

“I’ll be back,” she said instead. “We need food. Just…try not to break anything.”

He nodded solemnly. 

“And if anyone who isn’t me tries to get in…just…hide.” Rey tapped a loose deck panel near the bed with the toe of her boot. “Trapdoor,” she said. “Not very deep, but if you keep quiet, you might have a shot. Now…I really do have to go.”

“Of course,” said Red. He sat up a bit straighter, and inclined his head to her. “I will see you tonight.”

Rey nodded, and reached for her coat and goggles. 

No sense in wasting daylight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Yay, interlude chapter! 'Red' is getting stronger...  
> 2\. He's going to tell her his name in the next chapter...  
> 3\. Also, Jakku is still dangerous. DANGEROUS.


	11. Recruitment Drive I: Niima Justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey's trip to Niima is both alarming and illuminating. Zuvio deals with the fallout from the Road War. Things get nasty. However, Zuvio has an idea...He might be able to turn a problem into an asset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for violence! ...This is just what would probably happen if two nasty raider Clans went at it, and meanwhile there's only ONE center of semi-benign civilization on this Force-forsaken planet.

Rey took the long way around, pushing the speeder as far as she dared. She dodged the sunlight wherever possible, sometimes sacrificing speed for stealth, keeping the Ravager on her right as much as she could, senses on fire, trying to take it all in at once.

 _Soft focus,_ Rey thought grimly. She felt a sudden, grinding pain of regret for her lost speeder and its new (well, new to her) proximity alert system.

Now she had to look out for danger the old-fashioned way.

Fortunately, Rey knew the area well enough to dodge and weave between all the good hiding places without straining her memory. If anyone followed her into the maze of cracked earth and sharp rocks between the Badlands and Niima, they would regret it.

The Ravager, however, was quiet. Cerebos’ flag – the Mad Dog flag – still flew high in the sky. But the sharp flare of blaster fire seemed to have quieted.

_Well, everyone needs sleep. Nobody can keep that up forever._

And if it was the Clan fighting the Mad Dogs… Well from what she'd seen the previous day, Rey wouldn't be surprised if there had been heavy casualties on both sides. Especially if the Militia had gotten involved, as they were wont to do with the raiders ventured too close to the Outpost.

Rey shivered. She hoped not. Her feelings on the place aside, it wasn't all bad. And there were families there. Businesses. Lost souls just trying to survive. Or forget.

 _A good place for me,_ she thought. _For Red._

He'd be one of them soon. A man displaced, forgotten. History had moved on without him. The Galaxy he’d known was in pieces. The Empire he’d served was dust and memory. 

She assumed that he was an Imperial, anyway, considering that she’d found him on a warship.

Rey bit her lip as she pondered the mystery. He'd clearly been meant to survive the crash – the structure of the med bay confirmed that. But why? Was that area of the ship just what it appeared; an emergency medical facility? If he was an officer, and he'd survived whatever had killed his shipmates… Rey shuddered as she remembered the bodies stacked in the bilge, glassy eyes following her light as she picked her way through the dark.

Strange, the questions that rose high in her mind after she’d left his presence.

_Well, I haven’t really had time to think…_

But there was nothing that she could really do. 

_Ask him when you get back._

Rey smiled a little. 

_And I_ will _get his name._

 

*

 

The perimeter power grid was still up.

 _At least something is going right today,_ Zuvio thought. He walked closer to the main gate, one hand on a stun baton, the other hanging casually at his side, a whisper away from the blaster strapped to his thigh.

A rickety hover sled, piled high with battered plaster steel crates and a number of lumpy burlap sacks strapped in with the cargo net was waiting just inside the gate. Zu, one of Plutt's "trade managers," was glowering at the driver, who was growing increasingly pale with each threatening gesture.

Finally Zu shoved the old, ragged human in the chest. He hit the ground in a jumble of thin limbs. A reedy whine issued from his throat.

_Oh, for…_

"What's going on here?" Zuvio growled, drawing his baton.

The drivers's companion took advantage of the distraction to jump between the human and the Trandoshan female.

Zu scowled and jerked her thumb at the cowering human. 

"They don't have the gate fee. Not for all that," she snapped.

"It was five portions the last time we were here!" The human gasped, sagging against his friend.

Zuvio frowned, and stepped closer to the two beings.

"I haven't seen either of you around here before," he said, sneaking a look under the taller being's hood. A deep, muffled voice issued through the cloth covering its mouth.

"We haven't been to Niima in a while."

Zuvio frowned. The male's voice was cool and steady, nearly without inflection.

_No fear._

_Will he run, or kill?_ Zuvio mused.

He gestured to Zu to move back. The Trandoshan glared, but took a step away and leaned against the gate, hefting her rifle meaningfully.

"We apologize for the inconvenience, but I'm afraid that in light of recent… Events, we have been forced to be rather careful about what comes in this gate," the constable said, tapping the edge of said gate with his baton.

Electricity crackled through the air, leaving the sharp smell of ozone in its wake.

The human flinched. The hooded male nodded slowly. He was nearly a foot taller than his companion, and roughly twice Zuvio's size, though considerably lighter in his frame.

 _Hungry,_ Zuvio thought. _A fighter._

_That one too..._

He eyed the human carefully. The man was scared, clearly. His eyes were wide, his mouth pinched. Even his shoulders were shaking.

But not his hands. Those were balled into fists by his sides. The right was curved around something that Zuvio could not make out.

_A rock, maybe…_

"I would appreciate it, sir, if you would lower your hood," he said, after a tense silence. "You understand."

The tall being nodded slowly, and complied. Zuvio kept his expression carefully blank as the sackcloth hood fell away, revealing blue skin, black hair, and glowing red eyes.

"We're just looking to trade. Get a little food. A place to sleep. We'll be out of your hair in no time at all." 

Zuvio's smile did not reach his eyes.

"And who might I be addressing?"

The Chiss' smile broadened.

"I am Mitth'osilan. I go by Oz. This is Thetol. We deal in salvage, dry goods..." He brushed at his sleeve. "… And sand."

Behind him, Zu snorted.

"Everyone deals with sand," said Thetol, standing a little straighter. "Whether they want to or not."

Zuvio had to smirk.

"I need a statement from both of you," he said. "Your names. Your cargo. Reason for staying. Planned duration of your visit. The usual."

The two males looked at each other. Then Thetol shrugged.

"Fine," he said "As long as one of you transcribes." He held up his right hand.

Zuvio's lips curled with disgust. The man was missing three fingers, the rest wrapped in a bloodsoaked cloth.

"I'm a little… Indisposed. And Oz can't write Aurebesh."

Zuvio nodded curtly. He glanced away, out beyond the gate into the waist. The line of the gate was growing. Smaller groups are passing by the other checkpoints, sometimes dozens at a time. Most of them Zuvio had never seen. Which meant that they were either from the recently decimated Clan, or a cloaked ship loaded with impoverished colonists had crashed in the Graveyard.

Zuvio didn't have to be a professional gambler to win that bet.

_So many…_

Most of them were thin women and shaking children, all of more species than he could count. However, there were also a disturbing number of straight, strong beings with warrior eyes. 

_We can't afford a war with Cerebos,_ Zuvio thought. _Not now._

_Damn it._

_When did I get so weak?_

Niima couldn't support them all. There was only so much space. And if Cerebos came knocking, they wouldn't be able to hold out for long. Would the surviving Clan warriors -- and there were quite a few, clearly -- fight to defend the Outpost? Defend the town that had taken them in? Or would they take it for themselves?

_But if they fight for us...No...With us..._

_You can't win._

That voice again, that feeling. The grinding, almost-despair screaming that he was swimming against the tide.

Or, more accurately, walking into a sandstorm, daring it to strip the flesh from his bones.

His comlink crackled.

_Damn it, what now…_

"Boss! We got a fight in the bunkhouse. No –" More static, then fire and wild screams, reverberating oddly as Zuvio picked up the roar of primal violence with his own ears.

_Kriff..._

"Better get down here boss. They cracked the –" 

The next words were lost in static.

"What's going on?"

Zuvio jumped, and then cursed. The Chiss – Oz – had crept up next to him. Zu stood at his elbow, glaring suspiciously.

"Just some… Local color," Zuvio replied tonelessly. The constable gave the two traders a final look, and turned to Zu.

"Check their cargo. If everything is in order…" He sighed. "Let them in."

Zuvio shot the two males -- the two _warriors_ \-- a warning look.

"Stay out of trouble," he said, and mounted his short range speeder.

Lynchings were a bit higher on his priority list then mostly-legal Wastelanders.

He completely missed the glint of gold passing between Thenol and Zu.

 

*

 

 

The lynching was well underway by the time Rey got past the gate. Between the screams, the smoke, and the half-afraid, half-excited crowd flooding towards the scrapyard, it was hard to ignore, and impossible to avoid hearing the screams.

Rey tried just the same.

The only good thing that came out of it was the fact that there was nearly no competition in the market. She made off with a water filter and a jar of desiccant for less than a portion. Two of the tiny resistors she'd scavenged from the Gorgon fetched a surprising one-and-a-quarter portions from the microtech stall, enough to pick up an extra pack of vitamin tablets from the commissary.

_And speaking of the commissary…_

Thanks to Niima’s special brand of justice, the commissary was closed, and Plutt was nowhere to be seen.

 _He's probably got a front row seat,_ Rey thought.

The wind shifted, carrying another wave of screams.

_Force…_

It sounded like there were at least ten people…

Her stomach clenched. But she needed Plutt. She – _they_ – needed food. So she wrapped a length of cloth around her mouth and nose and clambered up onto a pile of scrap. The height gave her an unobstructed view of the Outpost, like vulture perched on a cliff, eyeing a rotting carcass.

The killing fields spread out beneath her. There were more than ten. A lot more.

Bile rose in her throat as she recognized three of the beings hanging by the wrists and ankles from a makeshift gallows. Two human males in a Togruta female.

Three of the Clan warriors that she'd rescued.

The other dozen or so were a mix of blank-eyed Wasteland scum, thieves who had run out of second chances, and musclebound warriors branded with Cerebos’ three-headed dog.

Apparently one size fit all these days when it came to Niima justice.

Rey's vision blurred when she saw six more Clan warriors chained to a rusted pipe, right next to three snarling Mad Dog raiders. Waiting to die.

_What happened here?_

Niima was a rough town, but they were usually more… Discerning than this.

_Where the hell is the militia?_

The wind shifted again. Rey's nostrils filled with the smell of roasting meat. And heaven help her, her mouth watered.

_It's been so long…_

Rey jumped off the scrap pile and hit the dirt, her stomach churning. Fortunately, there were too many beings around to see her fall.

 _Get to Plutt,_ she thought, as a scream stabbed through her head. _No..._

_Find Zuvio._

 

*

 

Halfway to the bunkhouse, Zuvio realized that getting through the crowd was going to be impossible. He commed his cousins and the smattering of Militia volunteers –- recent recruits, all, largely thanks to the Clan and the Mad Dogs stepping up their game -- and clambered up onto the top of the bunkhouse roof.

The violence was centered near the commissary, on a wide stretch of open ground where Plutt kept his more valuable acquisitions, along with piles of junk that Zuvio had given up trying to identify.

The center of Niima was rather more stable than the stalls in the market. There was a mostly unbroken line of prefab and concrete structures between him and the commissary; a secondary highway, typically used by smaller beings and younglings. And, today, for him.

Zuvio braced himself, and jumped.

He spotted Rey two minutes later. The girl was picking her way along the sharp edge of an ancient plasma turbine. A small pack was slung across her thin shoulders, and her face was half obscured by a faded rag.

Oddly, her staff was nowhere to be seen.

He was spared the decision of whether or not to speak when she jerked to a halt, turned, and looked straight at them. After a moment of hesitation, she darted to a ladder on the side of a storage tent and clambered up to join him.

"Zu –"

Zuvio held up a finger to silence her. He dropped into a crouch is the roar of the crowd below swelled alarmingly.

Rey paled and followed suit, her dark eyes watering from the greasy smoke.

"I haven't seen you around lately," he murmured when he was sure that the crowd would cover his voice. Rey looked away, almost sheepishly.

_Interesting._

"I've been busy," she said evasively. "But really… What the _hell_ is this?" She gestured sharply at the mob. "What have you been doing? They shouldn't –"

"I've been doing what I can," Zuvio snapped. "The Clan and the Dogs went after each other a couple weeks ago. From what we can tell, the Clan got rooted out of the _Inflictor,_ and most of the survivors came here."

Zuvio shook his head.

 _Not that I blame them,_ he thought. _Where the hell else would they go?_

"Apparently they did some serious damage to the Dogs though. I saw the fire on the _Ravager_ from the station. Did you see it?"

Rey was silent.

"Apparently the Dogs are not being especially welcoming," he continued, watching her carefully.

Normally, defeated raider clans got absorbed into the victor’s ranks. But this _desperation_ that he was seeing… No, this conflict had turned _personal._

"But… Why?" Rey muttered, half to herself. "The killings… What happened?" Dark realization sparked in her eyes. "They attacked Niima, didn't they?" 

Zuvio nodded grimly.

"Just a few raids on the satellite scavengers… Have you had any trouble?" he asked, eying her with concern.

Rey shook her head quickly.

"Not… Recently," she said. And looked away again.

Zuvio’s hackles rose. There was something there, he suddenly knew. Something had changed.

_Wasn't she headed out that way…_

Rey derailed his train of thought with a sudden, shocked gasp.

A chill ran down Zuvio’s spine as the pink flush of exertion drained from her face. Her eyes went wide and dilated, and she swayed to the side, nearly toppling off the roof.

Zuvio reached out to steady her, but she recovered herself abruptly and smacked his hand away. She whirled on him, eyes wide.

"Look!" she hissed, and jabbed her finger at the far side of the killing field.

Zuvio pulled out his macrobinoculars. He could barely make out the rough shape, the flicker of motion amid the writhing crowd. But –- 

_–- There -–_

A heavily laden cart, burlap obscuring its contents, trundled up to the edge of the crowd. Two males were riding up front. The driver jumped down the second the cart ground to a halt. Zuvio's eyes widened as the driver's headscarf slipped, revealing a stretch of dark blue skin.

The lawman swore, and jumped to his feet. He powered up his comlink just as the two traders he’d admitted not a half an hour previously dropped their hoods and hauled the cloth off the wagon, revealing a dozen Clan raiders, all armed to the teeth.

The crowd fell silent.

Next to him, Rey gasped. Zuvio barely spared her glance, but… Was that _recognition_ in her eyes?

He decided to worry about it later when the raiders advanced on the scaffold, vibroblades humming, rifles cocked. Everyone in the front line had a burlap bag slung over their shoulders.

_Wait, what?_

Zuvio pulled out his comlink again.

"Hold," he whispered.

The Chiss male -- _Oz_ \-- gestured to his companions, who stepped up to the scaffold and stood toe to toe with the two Devaronians stoking the fire. The sharp _click_ of blasters being cocked snapped through the air.

Time grew thick as Oz stared them down.

Then the Devaronians stepped aside. The Clan rushed the scaffold, brandishing the burlap sacks, putting out the fire. The remaining warriors aimed their rifles at the crowd, silencing the angry roar.

Zuvio’s breath caught when Chiss brandished a vibroblade and cut down two of his comrades. The other, though…

Oz laid his hand on the human’s forehead. Rey gave a soft cry.

Zuvio's chest tightened as Oz slid the blade into the human’s heart.

 _Too far gone,_ Zuvio thought.

In a mad, sad way, it made sense. He glanced at Rey.

The girl was hugging herself and shaking, her eyes wide and staring. Zuvio reached out his hand to – _what, comfort her?_ – and immediately thought better of it.

"I need to find Plutt," she whispered.

Below, the crowd slowly disbursed. The mood was broken, the bloodlust temporarily sated.

The rest had died, after all. Or would very soon.

The Clansmen released their comrades from their chains, and quickly ushered them back to the cart. Zuvio fingered his comink, but thought better of it. He stepped to the edge of the roof, and offered Rey his hand.

"There's Plutt," he said, nodding at the being plodding back to the commissary, surrounded by his hired muscle.

Rey nodded, and climbed down on her own. She vanished into the crowd.

So did the Clan warriors. Their cart lay abandoned on the edge of the field. 

Zuvio closed his eyes, his head suddenly aching.

“Close the gates,” he muttered into his comlink. “No one gets out.”

He jumped down, pulled his rifle off his back, and made a beeline for the Devaronians. 

The jail was going to be rather full.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Jakku is basically a post-Apocalyptic Wasteland. The Aftermath canon has only solidified this headcanon for me. It's Space Australia, guys.  
> 2\. Zuvio and Niima will, therefore, do the most logical thing. RECRUIT the Clan warriors. If they're going to stay, they need to help fight off the Mad Dogs if anyone is going to survive the year. Niima has an energy barrier, after all. There's benefit to both sides, here.  
> 3\. That's why there are 2 parts. Zuvio will display some surprising political and tactical savvy. And Oz will get the Niima locals on his side. Or, well, less mad at him than they currently are.  
> 4\. Meanwhile, Rey's AT-AT is probably the safest place on the entire freaking planet. Obviously.  
> 5\. Cerebos' raiders are referred to in Niima as the 'Mad Dogs.'


	12. Recruitment Drive II: Lockdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Constable Zuvio and the Niima Militia attempt to stave off anarchy. Rey is caught between a rock and a hard place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm alive. And nope this fic isn't abandoned! I've just been wrangling a new job, which has been eating my life. Looks like it's settling out a bit though.
> 
> Also, thanks to _The Last Jedi_ I'm doubling down on this fic. Any reservations I had about continuing this (given some surprise Palpatine-related canon in the _Aftermath_ series) are gone. We didn't learn anything new about it in TLJ, you see.

Rey stumbled through the crowd and tried to keep Plutt in sight. Her ears rang with shouts in multiple languages, and the sputter and growl of struggling engines. Those who had some sort of transport – speeder, cargo hauler, low altitude freighter – were gearing up for a speedy exit. Everyone else, it seemed, was hauling tail to the relative safety of the Outpost bunkhouse. 

Rey herself fully intended to get the hell out of Niima after she traded in the last two resistors. Thanks to what she’d just seen, there were now at least a dozen Clan raiders in Niima who knew her face, and had reason to want her dead. She’d rescued several of them from the Mad Dogs when she’d escaped Cerebos…but that probably wouldn’t mean much, considering that her trespass had kicked off the conflict in the first place. But she couldn’t go back without a full array of immune boosters for Red, and Unkar Plutt was the only source on Jakku. 

She had to find him, and fast.

Rey caught up with Plutt on the edge of the scrapyard. The junk dealer was fumbling with the fence, testing the strength of the repulsor field and looking warily over his shoulder. Two of his favorite enforcers flanked him, ensuring that most of the frazzled residents gave him a wide berth. They glared at Rey when she stepped into view. 

"Not today," Plutt snapped, without looking at her. "We're closed."

"Then I will take my business elsewhere," she said, keeping her face carefully blank. Plutt snorted. But she’d gotten his attention. His piggy eyes snapped to her lumpy shoulder bag. 

"Rumor has it you found something," he said. Rey’s fingers tightened on the shoulder strap.

"Maybe I did," she said cooly. She poked the bag. It clanked. "You want in, or not?"

Plutt was silent for a long moment. Then he gestured roughly towards the commissary counter.

"Get up there. Fast," he snarled. "You're not going to get much today." Rey snorted.

"I know," she said. "I need four supplement doses and a class 7 immune booster. And a syringe. A _clean_ syringe." Plutt stared at her for a long moment, and then started to laugh. 

“And would Milady like some perfume and a Corellian Corvette to go with that?” he said, in between wet, gasping laughter. She just looked at him blankly. She wasn’t even mad. Not really. The Blobfish was just being himself. Finally the hilarity faded, and he gestured towards the commissary. 

“Ten minutes,” he growled, and turned back to his work. “Try not to die.”

Rey turned on her heel and strode off into the crowd, keeping the fence at her back. No sense in making herself easy to flank. And she could always throw someone against it, if she had to…

 

*

 

She wasn’t the only one at the commissary counter. Vona and her husband were waiting under the tarp, clutching their pitiful offerings close to their chests. A shudder ran through Rey’s body. She kept her steps soft, and stayed out of the old woman’s line of sight as long as possible. 

_It couldn’t have been her…It couldn’t…_

But Vona had been one of the only people she’d visited the last time she was here. The only one she’d made a significant, very specialized purchase from. It wouldn’t have taken a hyperdrive scientist to figure out that she was embarking on a significant adventure. Off-worlders wouldn’t have made the same sort of connection on their own. Probably.

For a moment, she considered asking. Just…get it all out in the open.

But then Vona would know that she knew. And the old woman had a line on items that were hard to come by. She had _connections._

_I might need her. Or, at least, what she can give me._

Rey’s stomach twisted. But it was true. 

_“Shavit,”_ she muttered. She plastered a smile across her face and stepped into line.

“Good day Vona,” she said, as cheerily as she could manage. Vona whirled. Her bleary eyes nearly popped out of her head. 

“Good…Good day to you, Rey,” Vona stammered. “It’s…it’s been awhile since I’ve seen you around here.” Her husband nodded, his dark eyes fixing on her with sudden curiosity. Rey gave her a thin smile.

“Yes, I’ve been busy. Fixing up my…what did you call it before? My bolthole. I found some pretty decent durasteel, and used it to bulk up the hull,” she said, the lie rolling smoothly off her tongue. “But…now…” She pointed at her still-lumpy rucksack. “I’m fresh out of food, so I came here to trade.” Rey shrugged, keeping her face carefully blank. “Some old stuff. Hopefully he’ll take it.”  
Vona swallowed. 

“Ah…Yes. I see. That’s…good,” she said. “There’s been a lot of, ah, _activity_ over in the Graveyard…We thought you might have gotten caught up in it.” Rey shrugged, though her insides twisted and stabbed.

_It was her. It was. It was her…_

“Nah,” she said, as flippantly as she could manage. “I just mind my own business. Whatever those assholes do is no concern of mine.” She paused for a moment. “Lot of fireworks though…Some real hot sand for awhile. I figured it was best to avoid the Road for a bit.”

“Well…I’m glad you’re safe,” said Vona. Her voice took on a syrupy, ingratiating tone. “We’d hate for something to happen to you out there, all on your own…”

“No way for a girl to live,” her husband said gruffly. Rey ignored him. 

“I do all right,” she said, with a glance around the scrapyard. “Now…Where is he?”

“Hope the Dogs didn’t kill him,” Vona grumbled. “We’d all starve.” Rey looked at her.

“You were there,” she said, with a glance towards the earth. “At the…at the killing.” Vona nodded, her expression bored.

“Yeah. Cut off too early if you ask me. So much _scum_ in here these days…” She shook her head. “But they’ll get what’s coming to them, you better believe it, girl.”

Rey couldn’t look at her. She could only think of the vibroblade sliding into the half-burned man’s heart, of his eyes widening in grateful pain before the light inside guttered out forever. A man she’d _saved_ mere days ago. 

Her memory flashed to the Chiss who had led the charge on the scaffold. It was the same one she’d encountered on the Road, she knew. He’d tried to kill her then…and not entirely without cause.  
Her insides twisted with guilt.

_If I hadn’t gone that way, the Dogs might not have attacked…_

But…then she’d be dead, or chained up in the belly of a slave ship, brutalized beyond recognition. And Red would have starved to death, alone in the dark, cursing her name.  
Rey’s shoulders slumped. Maybe it hadn’t been the best decision. But…what else could she have done? Rey couldn’t think of anything with even a remote possibility of her survival.

She’d do it again if she had to.

With nothing much left to say, and too much that they couldn’t, the three humans waited in silence until Plutt lumbered into the commissary with a grunt. He was at the counter a few minutes later, after much clanking and grinding of machinery in the back room. He ignored Vona completely and waved Rey to the front of the line.

“All right girl, what have you got?” he grunted. 

Rey smiled sweetly and pushed her two resistors carefully across the counter. She’d packed them securely in a paper-lined box, just like all of her more delicate finds. It ensured optimal delivery condition, and showed potential buyers that she was _reliable._

“This ought to cover that booster, at least. And the syringe,” she said, keeping her voice low. Rubbing her find in Vona’s face wouldn’t do any good. Plutt’s eyes widened. Rey could almost see the gears churning in his head. She wondered, vaguely, how many hundreds of credits that he’d get for them on the black market. “It’s Old Imperial tech,” she whispered. “Nearly mint. You’re not going to get a clean extraction like this from anyone else.”

Plutt eyed her, his beady eyes sharp and greedy. He took her meaning instantly:

 _Yes, you piece of Hutt shavit. I found something. And if you don’t want it ripped apart by the rest of these_ amateurs, _you’ll leave it to me._

“The syringe and the booster,” he growled. “7 mils of it. And consider yourself lucky, girl. I’m in a good mood today.” 

Rey opened her mouth to protest. 7 milliliters was the absolute bare minimum for an immune boost. Enough for a child, barely enough for an adult to build off of. But the tension in the air was rising. She had to leave, and soon. Rey nodded. Plutt smirked and slid a small box over the counter.

“Open it. It’s all there,” he said, laughing at her suspicious glare. Rey did, angling her body so that Vona and her husband couldn’t see. It was indeed; a tiny vial of green fluid and a gleaming syringe as long as her hand. She looked at him and nodded curtly, snapping the case shut.

Rey was about to turn away when Vona cursed quietly, grabbed her husband, and sidled away from the counter, keeping their eyes on the ground. Someone cleared their throat directly behind Rey, making her spin around.

“Zuvio,” Plutt growled. “Bout time for you to show up.”

“Constable,” said Rey quietly. She slipped the box into her rucksack. The Kyuzo nodded at both of them and stepped up to the counter. He looked Plutt in the eye and held out a shrink-wrapped packet of protein concentrate.

“I need to use your comm system,” he said brusquely. “Ours went down, and I have an announcement. It impacts the entire Outpost.” 

Plutt eyed him suspiciously. But he snatched up the ration packet and waved Zuvio over to the commissary door. Rey wavered on her feet, torn between making a speedy exit, and curious about Zuvio’s mission. He’d seemed…upset at the scrapyard earlier, during the lynching. If it had anything to do with the consequences of that, well, Rey wanted to be around to see it.

Maybe there would be justice.

 _For whom?_ a small, dark corner of her mind hissed. _If the Clan finds you…_

And they very well might. The most rational thing for the warriors to do would be to leave Niima as soon as possible. But if either faction caught her…

That decided her. Rey hefted her bag and nodded at Zuvio.

“See you around,” she said quietly, and turned to leave. 

“Rey, wait…” The constable held up his hand. “The gate’s closed.”

Rey froze in place. Slowly she turned back and stared at Zuvio.

“…Closed?”

“Yes,” he said, and snatched the comm mouthpiece from Plutt’s frozen hands. The Kyuzo cleared his throat and connected to the public intercom system.

“ATTENTION NIIMA RESIDENTS. THIS IS CONSTABLE ZUVIO. THE PERIMETER FENCE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED. IT IS LOCKED AT MAXIMUM CAPACITY.” There was a brief pause. “AND THE MAIN GATE HAS BEEN SHUT. IT IS UNDER ARMED GUARD. I ADVISE EVERYONE TO STAY IN THEIR HOMES UNTIL THE SITUATION IS RESOLVED. NIIMA MILITIA OUT.”

He set down the mouthpiece and gazed coolly at Plutt.

“It’s because of the lynching. And we have raiders loose in the Outpost. Clan _and_ Dogs. People are scared, and scared people do stupid things. Hence the lockdown. If we don’t do something _now,_ this whole place is going to hell, do you understand me, Plutt?”

Unkar Plutt could only stare. Then he recovered. And for once, him and Rey were in total agreement.

"Lockdown?" Plutt sputtered, his tiny eyes incredulous.

“Think of it as…extra security,” Zuvio replied. “No one gets in or out until we get to the bottom of this. Your…business will survive a few days without new parts.” Rey gaped at him.

“A few _days?”_ she cried. “I can’t stay here for a few days! I have to…” She doubled back just in time. “I have to _work!”_

 _I can’t stay here for another_ minute, _much less a few days…_

Zuvio glanced at her sharply, then back to Plutt.

“This community is ready to explode. What happens then, Plutt?” He gestured sharply at the commissary, the scrapyard, and at the still-smoking fire under the rough metal scaffold. He lowered his voice and glared at Plutt. “They’ll be coming for _you.”_

The Crolute stared at him, the beginnings of fear in quivering in his eyes. Rey’s mouth twisted. In a different situation, it might have been funny. Satisfying, even…But _her_ ass was almost certainly on the line as well. Zuvio’s lips curled up into a bitter smile.

“Yes…you see now. These people are starving. Desperate. Inches from a mob. Who has all the _food,_ Plutt?” Some of the old anger seeped back into the Crolute’s beady eyes.

“You’re a bastard, Zuvio,” Plutt growled. The constable snorted.

“You’ve got guards,” he said. “I’d like some of them. Every being counts.” 

“And who’s going to watch the commissary when they’re out…patrolling with you?” Plutt snapped. 

“I don’t need _all_ of them,” Zuvio snapped. “I need _six,_ to balance out the patrol. Extra eyes…They don’t have to be your best, just decent with a rifle or rod…and ready to fight.” His voice took on a thoughtful tone. “I can think of a few others…You want your _scavengers_ to be heroes?”

Plutt got it. Rey barely swallowed a laugh. The lowest of the low, raised up? Of course the Blobfish would do _anything_ to stop it.

“You get six,” he growled. “The rest stay here.” Zuvio nodded. 

“Excellent. Send them to Headquarters. I’ll be waiting. And…” He turned to Rey, and looked her straight in the eye. “Every being counts. Pass the word. Anyone who still wants what we’ve built here…Tell them to come.”

Rey flinched. She knew what he meant, and what he was trying to do. Relative safety. Comfort, of a sort. The knowledge that _someone_ was watching your back, that you didn’t always have to sleep with a loaded blaster under your pillow. Peace. Order. The wicked punished under the rule of law, not the whim of the mob.

Justice. 

She knew, in theory, that such a thing was possible.

But not here. Not for her. 

_But doesn’t he deserve his dream?_ she thought reluctantly. _Don’t they all?_ She thought of Red, waiting for her back in the _Hellhound II._ She thought of what having _someone_ to share her space, someone to care for, had made her feel. 

_What if they find me. What if they find_ us?

She’d protect herself, as she always did. She’d guard her land, her hard-won possessions, what small security and smaller joy she had. She’d shield her friend. 

Rey looked at Zuvio, and knew that he was doing the same. 

But…what _could_ she do? She had no weapons. Nothing that would stand against a blaster at point-blank range, anyway. And she would almost certainly draw more fire on whatever group she was with. The militia didn’t deserve that. 

“I’ll pass the word,” she said quietly. “And I’ll…Keep an eye out.” She nodded at Zuvio, smiled sadly, and walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Jakku is basically the Wild West crossed with a post-Apocalyptic Wasteland:**  
>  Zuvio is the hardened sheriff.  
> His cousins are deputies.  
> Plutt is the degenerate rich asshole who owns the deeds to all the ranches in the general vicinity, and half the town.  
> The raiders are bandits who think they can do whatever the hell they want.  
> Rey is the lone gunman who walks into town in a sharp hat and grim expression, and doesn't want to get involved.  
> Her speeder is her noble steed.  
> 'Red' is another lone gunman/antihero with his own moral code, who teams up with the other gunman because there are benefits to doing so.


	13. Recruitment Drive III: Allegiance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Zuvio consider their options, and take action. Alliances are made, and feuds are tabled. For now.

Rey took to the rooftops as soon as the commissary was out of sight. She clambered up rough metal and filthy canvass until she was high above the mad whirl filling the Outpost. She crouched in the shadow of a soot-stained column of twisted metal, and tried to clear her head.

It was a little easier to think when she was above it all like this. Less noise, less _panic_ soaking the air. She set her pack down and considered her options, sinking further into the shadows as Zuvio dashed past her towards the Militia Headquarters, six of Plutt’s thugs in tow.

Rey’s eyes widened at the look of grim purpose on all of their faces. Perhaps they had come to the same realization that Plutt had; if what little semblance of order disappeared, the Niima locals would come for them. Longstanding resentment had a way of boiling over into violence. 

The streets were clearing fast. Most Niima residents were, apparently, taking Zuvio’s suggestion to heart. But not all. Rey’s eyes widened as she spotted a group of heavily armed beings massing on the edge of the scrapyard, and another near one of the smaller wells.

Rey’s heart sank as she realized that the latter group was headed up by the Clan Chiss. He dropped his hood, and paced in front of the more-or-less even line of bedraggled beings, all armed. Her eyes widened as she realized that, among the bristling mass of crude axes and rusted blades, there were several gleaming blaster rifles and a smattering of Class 2 thermal detonators. Enough firepower to set half the Outpost on fire, and turn the other half to dust.

 _Force…They got the offworlders’ stash…_ For the tenth time, Rey cursed Vona, her husband, the scum who’d tried to take her, the Clan, and the Dogs. _They must have made off with it right after I cut them loose…_

And now they were going to use it to take Niima…

Rey’s insides went cold. 

_It’s my fault…It’s all my fault…_

Her eyes fell once again to Zuvio, his six recruits, and the crude stun guns that they were packing. They had no idea what they were about to walk into.

Rey sprang to her feet. She ran to the edge of the roof and yelled down, abandoning all subterfuge.

_“Zuvio!”_

The Kyuzo looked up. A faint smile crossed his face. Rey scowled and jumped back down into the dust.

“Rey. Glad you decided to join us.”

“I haven’t,” she snapped. “But you’ve got problems.”

“No kriffing shavit, scavenger,” growled one of Plutt’s goons. 

Rey held her tongue with considerable effort. An image of all six of them -- _and more, far more_ \-- lying facedown in the dirt, blood and engine oil seeping into their skin and scales flashed through her mind. She stood her ground. She turned to Zuvio and ignored the vulgar commentary fired in her general direction by the six heavies.

“Well, it just got worse,” she said. “They’ve got blasters...” Quickly she laid out the situation for him, pointing at the roof and describing where the two factions were massing as best as she could, glossing over where, exactly, they’d gotten all the weapons. It was clear that Zuvio guessed, though. At least part of it. The militia made a point of checking all new arrivals for deadly weapons, and confiscating the _really_ nasty stuff when they caught it. Of course, that didn’t stop the inevitable trickle of energy weapons and vibroblades, but it at least stemmed the tide to some extent. 

“Kriff,” he muttered. He leaned in a bit, to keep the others from hearing. “You sure they’ve got explosives?” 

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Not the ship killers, but bad enough. They could definitely take out the generator if they wanted…” …Which would be quite stupid, in her opinion. The energy field was one of the main draws of living in the Outpost in the first place. If the Clan took it over, they’d be foolish to eliminate their best defense. 

_The Dogs, though…_

She’d looked Cerebus in the eye. He fought for _blood._ He was one of those beings who just wanted to burn the world, and scrape up and eat what was left. He’d like nothing better than to be the _only_ source of relative safety on Jakku.

Rey shuddered, the visceral terror that she’d tried to shove into the back of her mind returning with a vengeance.

_Never. Not him._

Zuvio frowned, concern crossing his face.

“Rey?” She shook her head.

“Never mind me…What the hell are _you_ going to do?” Zuvio glanced back at the six recruits, keeping his face carefully blank and his voice low.

“I don’t want to lie to them…but if it gets _really_ bad out there…They’ll break.”

“Do you think so?”

“I know so,” Zuvio growled. Rey was silent for a long moment. She watched him think, and glanced back and forth from the end of the dusty street, and to the relative safety of the rooftops. Then she knelt in the dirt and started sketching out a rough map of the Outpost. When she was finished she grabbed up two rocks and planted them where the groups of raiders were massing. Zuvio crouched down next to her after a moment, and watched the map take shape. 

“There’s the Headquarters,” he murmured, tracing a line in the dirt. “The rest of the Militia is meeting us there…” He tapped the short-range comlink hanging from his belt. The Kyuzo glanced behind him at Plutt’s thugs. “But the Dogs are between us and them…We might not be able to bolster the reinforcements…And, this is an excellent map, Rey…” He eyed her critically. “You’ve got a good memory.” Rey looked away.

“It’s nothing,” she muttered, trying to stop the faint blush. Compared to the wrecks that she was in every single day, the layout of the Outpost couldn’t be simpler. “How are you going to get around them?”

Zuvio looked from her, to his six recruits, and then to the roof. He smiled.

 

***

 

Twenty minutes later Rey’s patience was hanging by a thread. One of Plutt’s men had fallen off the roof, and refused to climb back up. The rest were making enough noise to wake the dead. She winced as a Devaronian’s rusty blade smacked into a makeshift chimney. 

“Could you at least _try_ to be quiet?” Rey hissed through clenched teeth. The hulking female just gave her an enormous, toothy smile.

“We’re not womp rats, scavenger,” she hissed. Rey glared.

“Well, even krayt dragons can be kriffing _quiet_ when they have to be!” she snapped. 

“Shut the kriff up, both of you!” hissed a Trandoshan on Rey’s left. “They’re right below us!” 

Rey looked down. They were indeed. The Chiss was giving a low, impassioned speech. Rey caught a few words. It was a mix of Basic, Huttese, and High Galactic, and all ‘revenge,’ ‘survival,’ ‘victory,’ and ‘DEATH TO THE MAD DOG!’ 

_Well, that makes two of us,_ Rey thought. She wouldn’t exactly cry if Cerebos’ entire army was wiped out. 

Zuvio held up his hand, drawing the group to a halt. He stared down at the group of raiders, his gaze sharpening with grim determination. Rey pursed her lips, and wished she had one of those thermal detonators. He waved them forward after a moment, with a whispered command for _silence._ Rey complied, and watched Zuvio and the Chiss carefully, staying out of the latter’s line of sight. Then, to her horror, one of the two males who’d refused to climb back up to them ran into a sheet of transparisteel. 

There was a loud _clang,_ and the raiders sprang into action. A gleaming spear protruded from the man’s chest before any of them could react. The Trandoshan roared a challenge and leaped from the roof, force pike blazing to life. Zuvio shouted at them to _hold position, damn it!_ but was only heeded by Rey and two of the others. 

Then the Chiss spotted them on the roof. He gestured sharply, and two whip-thin humans loosed grappling hooks, shot up the twisted sides of the nearest shelter, and headed straight for them, blasters cocked. Rey swore, and tried to sidestep the oncoming barrage, but found herself face-to-face with an angry Twi’lek and his gleaming blades. She ducked and jumped, the wild slash missing her by inches. Then a blaster shot rocked the scrap metal beneath her feet. She reached out, scrabbling wildly with her hands, to no avail. The ground rushed up to meet her, and everything went dark. 

 

***

 

A slap to the face woke her. She lashed out with her closest hand, only to find it bound tightly above her head. Her eyes snapped open. Panic flooded in fast. She was chained to a slab of concrete just outside the Militia Headquarters. Her legs were free, but nothing and no-one was within striking distance. Static started to build up behind her eyes, and then horrible, pounding _pressure,_ strangely similar to what she’d felt just before she found Red’s ship.

“Rey!” 

Her head snapped to the side. Zuvio was chained next to her, and minus his helmet and dented plate armor. She stared at him, shock pushing her panic aside for a moment. 

_He looks so…small…_ The Kyuzo snorted, as though sensing her chain of thought. 

“Keep it together,” he muttered. His eyes flicked to the right.

Rey sucked in a breath. The Chiss loomed over them, his hood down, a hold-out blaster at the ready in one steady hand. Rey met the glowing red gaze without blinking. 

“Do I know you?” she asked after a moment. Next to her, Zuvio groaned. The Chiss just looked at her, his expression unreadable. He let them stew in silence for a long moment.

“You trespassed,” he said, in perfect Basic, his eyes flickering. Rey stared back coldly. “You entered our section of the Road.”

“I was _chased into_ your section of the Road,” she said, keeping her voice as level as she could, having decided that there was nothing to be gained by bravado. Besides…it _was_ true, from a certain point of view. She’d never have ventured that close to the _Inflictor_ if the offworlders hadn’t been after her. She looked down a little, and lowered her voice. “Where else could I have gone?”

The Chiss’ eyes flared.

“So you thought we would run your enemies off for you, like trained greysors!” he snapped. “You brought the Dogs down on us!” 

“You brought the Dogs down on yourselves,” she said, her voice shaking. “No one _made_ you attack me. And I didn’t expect you to…to take care of my enemies! I could have lost them in the wreckage myself.” The Chiss glowered.

“Yes. After you blew up your speeder and alerted the entire _Ravager_ to your presence. If you think they’d have left us alone after that, you’re a bigger fool than you look, girl.”

Rey fell silent. 

“I didn’t think it would go that far,” she said finally. “I didn’t think that Cerebos was even in the area. And he…” She swallowed. “He captured _me_ too.” The Chiss snorted. 

“Yes? And? He’ll steal anything he can touch, and burn everything he can’t use,” he growled. “It’s what he _does.”_ His eerie gaze lingered on her lips, the loose tendrils of hair framing her face, and finally her eyes, piercing, intelligent, angry. “Especially with pretty things.” 

Rey’s lip curled.

“I am not a _thing!”_ she snapped. The Chiss’ eyes flashed.

“You are to him,” he growled. “Just like everyone else on this kriffing planet...” 

“What do you want, Oz?” Zuvio leaned forward, chains creaking. There was a rough groan from somewhere to his left. Rey’s temper rose as a very Trandoshan grunt echoed in the silence. It seemed that at least a few of Plutt’s goons had survived.

The Chiss – Oz -- turned to Zuvio. 

_“Justice,”_ he snapped. 

“On the Dogs?” Zuvio said, his voice surprisingly even. “There are, what, a few dozen in the Outpost? How many more in the _Ravager?_ You expecting Cerebus to be here too?” He paused, and glanced at Rey. “On _her?_ From where I’m standing, it doesn’t sound like she did anything wrong.”

“I _let you go,”_ Rey said, quiet, almost pained. Her gut twisted. Appealing to someone’s sense of mercy almost never went well. Not on this planet anyway. And it was humiliating. But…she _had…_

A horrible thought struck her. What if she’d _known_ what they were going to do? 

“I didn’t have to do that…”

Oz looked at her silently for a long, painful moment. 

“No. You didn’t,” he finally said. His eyes flashed, a scowl turning his mouth into an ugly gash. Then he gestured sharply, and a Clan raider strode up, an ugly metal axe in hand. Rey braced herself, ready to fight. The blade flashed out. There was a squeal of metal, and her chains hit the ground with a _thunk,_ taking her with them. Zuvio’s followed soon after. Oz strode up to them, blaster at the ready. He reached for her hands and deactivated the magna-cuffs himself. He raised his voice, addressing the massed raiders.

“Life for life,” he said. “The debt is repaid. The Mitth’os Clan and the scavenger…” he paused.

 _“Rey,”_ Zuvio whispered, seeing that said scavenger was struck dumb.

“…Rey are now on level sand.” There was a low murmur of approval. And a few sharp looks, but Rey wasn’t exactly going to complain. Especially when someone tossed her still-full pack at her.  
She caught it handily, and immediately looked inside. The box with the booster and syringe was still there…and intact. She stared at it in near shock. Oz glared at her.

“We don’t _steal,”_ he growled. “Well…” he amended. “Except from Cerebus. Now…” The Chiss hit her with the full force of his glare. “Get out. I don’t care how.” He paused and barked a few words in Huttese to one of his men. “We have control of the perimeter. If I’m not mistaken…you should be able to make it out the gate if the field charge is reduced enough. And you’re travelling at, oh…at least 90 kilometers per hour? It should sting a little, though.” He shrugged, not even the smallest bit apologetic. “But I’m sure you can handle it.” 

Rey stared at him for a long moment. Then she nodded and stepped forward. She’d gone a few steps when she glanced back at Zuvio.

“What about…What about Niima?” The Kyuzo shook his head. 

“Let us worry about that,” he murmured. “Go home Rey.” He turned to Oz and pointed at the two beings that were still chained up. “Cut them down. We’re going to need every being we’ve got to chase the Dogs out.”

“Chase?” Oz murmured. “Who said anything about _chase?”_ Zuvio’s jaw clenched, but he remained silent. He glanced back towards Rey, his eyes softening slightly.

“Go,” he mouthed. “It will be all right.”

Rey finally nodded, hefted her pack, and leaped up onto the roof. Alone and nearly unencumbered, it was child’s play to make it back to her speeder. She left it powered down after a moment of consideration, and pushed it to the gate; the best way that she could think of to avoid drawing attention to herself. 

Clan -- _No, Mitth’os Clan_ \-- raiders had taken the gate, just as Oz had said. They glowered at her, but lowered the barrier field strength after a brief, sharp conversation over their comlinks. 

Rey drew back a few hundred feet, and hit the accelerator. It hurt, just as Oz had promised. But she was free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaand Rey is out! And headed back to the _Hellhound II_ and 'Red,' hopefully with minimal problems. Niima is still in hot water, of course, but Zuvio is pretty savvy, and rather pragmatic.  
>  He thinks that, for now, the Mitth'os Clan is the lesser of two evils. (It's pronounced 'Mythos', which actually is a total coincidence. I didn't think of it when I named Oz...).

**Author's Note:**

>  **Pinterest page[here!](https://www.pinterest.com/onelightpoint/counting-days/) ** Man that site is addictive...
> 
> **Spotify playlist:**
> 
> [Counting Days Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/lightpoint/playlist/6eLD7ZCT7cOTxMY9jMDZz3)


End file.
